Fernando Grande-Marlaska, Minister of the Interior, also did not appear this Thursday in the Senate to explain what has happened these weeks in Ceuta, just as he had not done on August 12 and as neither the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, nor the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, did this same week. The PP, which holds an absolute majority in the Senate, called them extraordinarily due to the seriousness of the migration crisis and to politically extend the government’s wear and tear, and again confirmed that these absences are not a unilateral decision. The president of the Interior commission, the popular Fernando Martínez-Maíllo, summed it up bluntly: “It is a conscious and deliberate decision of the entire Government, driven by the president, who is on vacation.” The PP demands in its appeal to the Supreme Court that these appearances be forced before the end of August.
The last of the appearances that the PP wanted to force this week in the Senate of government ministers, a repetition of the one called on the 12th to Grande-Marlaska, lasted less than the previous ones, barely 18 minutes, but followed the same script. Martínez-Maíllo waited the customary courtesy minutes, looked at the empty chair reserved for the theoretical attendee, and confirmed: “He is not here, he has not come, it is the second time, he has not found time, nor desire, nor will.”
On this occasion, the president of the commission, theoretically a more or less neutral referee in this type of appearances, was politically harsher than the PP spokesperson in the chamber. Fernando Martínez-Maíllo, a veteran in the popular ranks now in the Senate, denounced from his podium that the minister had not wanted to rectify his previous absence and that the decision should be disqualified as “insubordination and an intolerable rebellion in a democracy.”
The president of the commission took the opportunity there to emphasize, as all the popular senators and also those from Vox and Junts have done in the other frustrated summons, that ministers and members of the Government “do not choose à la carte in which chamber they report on their actions, nor how nor when nor in any way.”
The PP maintains that in the control of the Executive there are no first- and second-class chambers and that both the Congress and the Senate have the constitutional right to summon members of the Government depending on who registers it first. That position was what served the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, on Wednesday to announce in Ceuta, on his third visit to the autonomous city since this crisis broke out on July 30, that they will appeal to the Supreme Court to clarify that point. Maíllo endorsed it this Thursday from the Senate and acknowledged that going to the Supreme Court to “restore their constitutional rights” is something “unprecedented,” but he highlighted that the behavior of the ministers and the Government is even more unprecedented.
The PP has filed this Thursday that contentious-administrative appeal before the Supreme Court’s third chamber in which they require, while taking a position on the precedence of the chambers, a series of urgent precautionary measures and provisionally order the Government “to cease its conduct of preventing or evading the appearances requested by the Senate; to attend the still pending sessions, with special reference to the new appearance of Marlaska called for August 20; to adopt within a maximum of 24 hours the necessary decisions to enable the appearances of the remaining ministers before the end of August; to immediately communicate to the Senate the availability of the ministers to be able to convene the sessions; and to refrain from conditioning the appearances in the Senate on their replacement by appearances promoted by the Government itself before the Congress.”
The popular party justifies this urgency on the grounds that the ordinary session period of the Cortes begins on September 1 and if the Supreme Court acts later “it could recognize the violated right, but would no longer allow recovering the political and parliamentary moment in which control should be exercised.”
Meanwhile, the PP uses these no-shows by the ministers to accuse them of not fulfilling their obligations and to point to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. Maíllo expressed it this way by pointing out that the responsibilities for the absences these days of Marlaska, Albares, or Robles are theirs, “collective,” but marked by the imposition of their boss. “It is a conscious, deliberate decision of the ministers and the entire Government, but driven by the president, who is on vacation.” And he hammered: “It is a repeated, recurrent, persistent, and stubborn decision.”
The PP senator, spokesperson in the session, Luis Santamaría, was left with little room to draw more opposition criticism, so he chose to highlight the seriousness of the situation in Ceuta, the lack of resources employed by the Ministry of the Interior, and to demand that the Government and Minister Marlaska face up and stop practicing “ostrich politics.”
The Vox spokesperson, Ángel Gordillo, emphasized “the challenge and rebellion” of the ministers who did not appear before the Senate and related it to that statement by Sánchez when he pointed out that he was willing to govern outside Parliament. Gordillo stressed the seriousness of the “invasion of Ceuta,” equated images of these days of the autonomous city with the worst moments of Haiti, and repeated that for his party what PP and Vox should now do is unite their votes to add enough in Congress to request a trial for treason against the President of the Government.
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