The pre-campaign for the Andalusian elections had its central event in the Senate this Monday. Juan Manuel Moreno presided over the ordinary meeting of the Governing Council in Seville at the San Telmo Palace while María Jesús Montero was forced to appear for almost three hours more than 500 kilometers away before the Upper House’s investigation committee on alleged irregularities in the management of the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI). The joy with which Montero left, almost running so as not to miss the train back to Seville, where the Fair begins tonight, is perhaps the best indication of how the PP’s strategy turned out.
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The PSOE candidate for the presidency of the Junta in the May 17 elections and former first vice-president and former Minister of Finance attributed her summons to the “partisan interests” of the PP, which controls the Senate with its absolute majority. In her opinion, the intention was to link her with Vicente Fernández, president of SEPI from June 2018 to October 2019, investigated along with the controversial former socialist militant Leire Díez and Antxon Alonso, according to the Central Operative Unit (UCO), a partner of former socialist Organization Secretary Santos Cerdán in the company Servinabar, in an alleged scheme of illegal commissions through contract rigging and public aid. Montero explained that the facts being investigated by justice would have occurred two years after Fernández’s departure from SEPI. Montero did not hide her “sadness,” but stressed that “no irregularity was detected” in the year and a half she presided over the conglomerate of public companies or those with a strong state shareholding.
The former number two of the Government also denied any relationship with Díez, whom the UCO arrested in December at the same time as Fernández in a case focusing on the crimes of fraud, document forgery, embezzlement, influence peddling, and malfeasance. “I have never had the opportunity to meet or encounter Ms. Leire Díez. I know her through the media,” Montero stated emphatically, reiterating that many of the questions she had been asked she had already answered in other appearances in the Cortes.
The right also questioned the rescue of Air Europa and linked it to actions by Begoña Gómez that have not been proven. “I find it offensive to link the wife of the Prime Minister to a loan that was immaculate (…) The president never, much less Ms. Gómez, made any allusion to me” about the operation, Montero stated, emphasizing that it was not a rescue but “a loan according to a perfectly established procedure, which has the authorization of the European Commission and which the State General Intervention and the Court of Auditors have deemed legal.”
All attempts by the Popular Party to dissociate her summons from the elections collapsed like a house of cards when, after two hours of appearance, Senator Salvador de Foronda unintentionally acknowledged the reasons for Montero’s appearance, which the PSOE unsuccessfully appealed to the Central Electoral Board. “The vote is protected by information, not by silence. Ms. Montero is here to account for an issue that concerns us all, the situation of SEPI. Therefore, what do you prefer, that citizens go to vote without knowing the information, is that what you intend?“, he affirmed just over a week before the formal start of the campaign. The commotion that occurred in the Clara Campoamor Room was instantaneous. The faces of circumstance of her bench mates said it all.
“Uff, uff!”, was Montero’s reaction, snorting, understanding that he was agreeing with her.
“Now you’ve really slipped up,” the socialist spokesperson, Alfonso Gil, told De Foronda.
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The senator’s blunder dismantled the arguments of his colleague Gerardo Camps, who for an hour maintained a very tense dialogue with Montero. “He alleges it’s a political attack, but she’s not here for being a candidate for the Junta de Andalucía, but for her responsibilities as minister,” he opened the session. “It is a discredit to this Chamber to question why she is here,” the committee president, Ana María Beltrán, reproached the socialist leader, urging her at several points to make her answers shorter and to be “calm,” to the annoyance of the interviewee and the senators of her party.
“The electoral calendar is evident, I am here so that you avoid talking about breast cancer and the poor functioning of healthcare in Andalusia,” was the catchphrase Montero used to explain her appearance, in which she asked the committee’s presiding table a dozen times for protection due to the succession of “generic questions based on value judgments” which she attributed mainly to the spokespersons of the PP and Vox. “The PP’s intention is none other than to try to paint an image that does not correspond to reality solely and exclusively for their electoral interests,” she insisted.
“This is as far as we go! I ask you not to repeat that you are here because you are a candidate. I moderate the debate, Ms. Montero, calm down,” she snapped at her after protests over the questions from ultra-senator Paloma Gómez.
“Madam President, the table must protect the interviewee when questions are asked that have nothing to do with the committee, I tell you calmly and in a low voice, as I have a torrent of a voice. But it is impossible to answer generic questions based on value judgments,” Montero assured.
After the appearance, the socialist candidate denounced the “misleading use” of the Senate by summoning her during the pre-campaign. “I am here because I am the PSOE candidate for the Junta de Andalucía, as Mr. Foronda acknowledged at the end of his speech,” she concluded before criticizing the PP for the “partisan use” of the institution. “That’s why the PP wants absolute majorities. Moreno Bonilla aspires to have an absolute majority in Andalusia. Let citizens know that absolute majorities lead to one having a blank check and using, however they please, institutions that must be democratic. Their quality cannot depend on the party in power that has a majority. That is what we have seen today,” she said goodbye.
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