The PP in the Senate is not just another political group, nor the most representative opposition to the Government; it is, according to its spokesperson in the upper chamber, Alicia García, “the democratic resistance to Sanchist authoritarianism” and “the brake on Sánchez’s authoritarian drift.” García, in that role, announced this Wednesday that she will demand in an upcoming Senate plenary session the censure of five government ministers, the heads of the Interior, Foreign Affairs, Defense, Health, and Equality ministries, in this case for not attending the summons with which they had been called to that institution to provide explanations about their involvement or inaction in the Ceuta crisis. Those five censures will surely be added to the eight of other ministers already approved in recent months in the Senate thanks to the absolute majority enjoyed by the PP.
The PP has defended throughout this legislature that the Senate is its preferred parliamentary chamber to oppose the Government and it is so in summer as well. Without respite. The popular spokesperson in the Senate, Alicia García, praised this on Wednesday with pride. She not only boasted that in this term they have already achieved the censure of eight government ministers, created seven investigative committees on all kinds of scandals, or convened the autonomous communities committee more times than ever, but also announced that they are “going for more.”
In that strategy, García included the announcement that in September they will call more plenary sessions to censure more ministers because they understand that this is the appropriate instrument to demand explanations from those ministerial departments about what happened in Ceuta and the political decision of their heads not to attend this August in that chamber to report on the actions that concern them in that crisis. The PP spokesperson in the Senate has already concluded that the Government and those ministers knew what was going to happen, did nothing, and have caused the “migratory chaos, public health, public order, and national security” that has resulted in turning that autonomous city now “into a collapse” of invasion in the streets, occupations, rapes, and disaster in health services.
In the context of that dramatic narrative, the PP maintains that the current absences of the ministers in the Senate and the president, Pedro Sánchez, remaining on vacation in the Canary Islands, are further evidence of “shame, nonsense, and arrogance,” so they have chosen to push in upcoming plenary sessions the censures of five ministers whom they point out for various aspects of the management of this crisis in Ceuta.
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The PP will thus request the censure of the Interior Minister, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, for leaving the Ceuta border with Morocco without the necessary police reinforcements; of the Foreign Affairs Minister, José Manuel Albares, for his poor relationship with the neighboring country; of the Defense Minister, Margarita Robles, for wavering with her willingness to go to the Senate but not showing up; of the Health Minister, Mónica García, for her statements about the safety of girls in Ceuta; and of the Equality Minister, Ana Redondo, for not having yet visited the autonomous city and speaking from outside about the safety of women there when, according to the popular party, sexual assaults have multiplied eightfold.
The Government has already announced and explained that those ministers and others, such as the Presidency Minister, Félix Bolaños, will go to the Congress starting next Tuesday to offer explanations about everything that has happened in Ceuta and that have been delayed because they intended to gather the most and best possible information. The Executive maintains that the Congress is a prevailing and priority chamber over the Senate in its oversight role, something the PP denies and is rushing the summons in the agenda to introduce first those of the upper chamber, where it holds an absolute majority. García thus confirmed that they will continue with that political offensive in the Senate and that they are studying the judicial route for the absences of the summoned ministers.
