The Government has decided to go on the counterattack against the trickle of cases affecting it with the denunciation of a kind of conspiracy to overthrow it “by undemocratic methods,” as Óscar Puente explained in the corridors of Congress. He appeared as a sort of unofficial spokesperson for the Executive to provide explanations about the content of the ruling by Judge Santiago Pedraz.
Read more The Aemet forecasts a drop in temperatures starting Tuesday after an unusually hot end to May
And on the very day this counterattack began after many hours of silence, the president, Pedro Sánchez, also requested to appear before Congress after the next European Council on June 18 “to report on the political situation related to the latest known judicial investigations” and also to talk about the summit in Brussels. Sánchez would thus intervene after former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero testifies before the National Court, with the judicial landscape a bit clearer.
Last year, when the Cerdán case crisis also broke out in May-June, Sánchez appeared in mid-July and announced an anti-corruption package that remains blocked in Congress. That appearance served to catch a political breath, because it was seen that he still had a certain majority, and to reach the summer and then resume in September with more strength with the massacre in Israel in Gaza as the major debate issue. The Executive is now trying a similar strategy although the weakness is greater, the cases accumulate, Junts is no longer in the majority, and the PNV is calling for elections.
Sánchez thus relieves pressure from the partners, who were also registering requests for appearances, and from Sumar, which is very upset and has negotiated with the socialist sector of the Government this announcement of explanations from the president.
The message from Puente, who acted as an unofficial spokesperson, was especially forceful. Although the minister did not want to directly point to the judiciary or the UCO or the UDEF, which investigate the most relevant cases, and rather launched against the PP; the minister left suspicions about everyone. “There are many people in our society who see what is happening, who see that there is a Government that is wanted to be overthrown not at the polls, but with other tricks, with undemocratic methods, and that is immoral. We will not bow to anyone’s attempts to disturb our democracy through undemocratic methods,” he said.
This idea is so ingrained in the socialist world that even the usually moderate president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has clearly hinted that he sees political intent in the accumulation of judicial cases against the main party of the Government, reports Angels Piñol. After emphasizing that “he respects the judiciary,” Illa clarified: “They will not bend us (…) Being a socialist is not being naive. I know how to distinguish what is a coincidence from what is not, what is a chance from what is not.”
Puente also said that the judiciary must be allowed to work, but at the same time he linked all the cases, including Zapatero’s, Pedro Sánchez’s brother’s or his wife’s, the former attorney general’s, to conclude: “I am very clear about what is happening. It seems that the timing of justice and politics surprisingly coincide. What are the chances that a case that has been going on for years and these investigations coincide?” he said about the Kitchen operation trial and the latest scandals.
Unlike Puente, a heavyweight of the Government and the federal leadership, Rebeca Torró, PSOE’s Secretary of Organization, did not wield that persecution theory. The number three of the socialists assured in a message on social media that the party “has not ordered, endorsed, or cooperated in any of the criminal behaviors that could be inferred from the judge Pedraz’s ruling” in which, among others, her predecessor Santos Cerdán, the plumber Leire Díez, and the current Ferraz manager, Ana María Fuentes, have been charged. According to Pedraz, the former Secretary of Organization ordered that Díez be paid 4,000 euros a month “charged to the party’s funds” through a “fraudulent” invoicing system in which the manager would have participated. Sources from Ferraz deny that Díez was paid with false invoices and that, if the modus operandi is confirmed, it was “undetectable” for the external audit carried out last year on the PSOE accounts. “The invoices are not false, they are real, and that is why [those payments to Díez] are undetectable. Another matter is what they were actually intended for,” the consulted sources explain.
Read more The heatwave scorches the French Government
The Minister of Transport, for his part, also doubted what Judge Pedraz’s ruling states, based on UCO reports, because, as he explained, at least two people allegedly blackmailed according to that ruling have already come out to say it was not so. He refers, on the one hand, to Leticia de la Hoz, the lawyer who defended Koldo García in the mask case. Judge Pedraz points out in his ruling that the plot led by Cerdán offered 50,000 euros to Carmen Pano to deny having taken 90,000 euros to Ferraz through the lawyer, who denied on Wednesday in a statement having offered any amount of money to the businesswoman, charged in multiple frauds.
The other example Puente referred to is that of José Grinda. The judicial ruling holds that the then anti-corruption prosecutor was the subject of an attempted bribe of 300,000 euros to provide information about the chief prosecutor, Alejandro Luzón. However, Grinda’s environment assured Cadena SER on Wednesday that he never received a bribe, not even an attempt to offer payments to him or his environment.
Puente insists that the socialist membership “is outraged” by this succession of events, that he “does not believe in coincidences,” and recalled that a media outlet (El Confidencial) revealed that the UCO was going to enter the PSOE headquarters and no one investigates that leak of secrets while the attorney general fell for another that, according to him, was not proven. “There are judicial cases that in other cases do not occur. Today we see how the Secretary of State for the Interior with the PP testifies in a trial in which it has been said that Rajoy’s name was removed from several reports because they forced the police officer in charge to do so. Sánchez’s brother is judged for working as a musician, which is, when Moreno Bonilla’s sister got a position with a candidate who had 11 points more and nothing happens,” Puente denounced, thus verbalizing something commented on in many sectors of the PSOE: that behind all these moves there is an orchestrated maneuver to destroy Sánchez and the progressive Government.
The relative of the Andalusian president obtained a public position in 2019 with fewer points than another candidate. That candidate challenged, of course, the cronyism of the appointment of Dolores Moreno as director of a conservatory. María Dolores Moreno obtained on June 14 of that year the position of new director of the Ángel Pericet Superior Dance Conservatory in Málaga. She got the position through an extraordinary merit contest among conservatory teachers, an unusual procedure for the provisional replacement of the previous director of the center, who retired last June. According to a confidential report from the Educational Inspection, accessed by EL PAÍS, she obtained 38.20 points out of 50 possible in the contest. Opposite her, Esperanza Utrera, another competitor for the same position, obtained 49.50 points. The Málaga Prosecutor’s Office filed in February 2020 the proceedings opened to investigate the procedure by which the sister of the president of the Junta de Andalucía was appointed. The public ministry concluded that her appointment was made “complying with the established regulations.”
Defense of Zapatero
Puente also questioned the Zapatero case. “Zapatero is more or less dedicated to the same as other former presidents in Spain and worldwide. And yet, President Zapatero is subjected to an investigation in which it seems to disregard a circumstance that is vital to me from a legal point of view, and that is that this gentleman since 2011, paraphrasing Mrs. Díaz Ayuso, is a private citizen, not a public official. Therefore, he is not subject to the obligations that a public official has. And this is an essential element that seems to be overlooked not only in the judicial action itself but also in the analysis made of it. It is astonishing,” he insisted.
“I am in many groups with many socialist militants, and there is deep outrage. This will have the opposite effect. There is weariness from the leaks, from the coincidences. Yesterday something false was published, that there was a raid at Ferraz for illegal financing, just before the control session. I do not believe in coincidences and I am not naive,” he concluded.
Read more Yuzz, María Pombo’s soda with ‘skincare’ ingredients that is making waves (and is sold on Amazon)
