This Saturday, the President of the Government read an institutional declaration that can only be described as a fallacious mirage of good intentions. Peppered with solemn references to the country’s unity around the pain of the DANA tragedy, Pedro Sánchez’s words showed a devious desire to hold the Valencian Generalitat exclusively responsible due to failures in the response to floods that have already caused more than two hundred deaths. It was an essentially contradictory speech, because Sánchez conditioned the central State’s help on being requested by Carlos Mazón and, at the same time, he insisted time and again on the national nature of the tragedy and the need for a unitary response. Objectively overwhelmed by the scope of the disaster, powerless in the face of a crisis that has exceeded its capabilities, the Valencian Generalitat has not been able to articulate in recent days an efficient response, on par with the damage caused by DANA, in the same way as Sánchez continues to hide the reasons that have led the Executive to delay the massive sending of military aid, beyond the instrumental deployment of the EMU. The incorporation of several ministers to the regional crisis cabinets announced in the middle of the afternoon by Mazón is nothing more than a desperate attempt by the Generalitat to involve the Government in a task that it has ignored and to which it tries to respond from afar. institutional.
The head of the Executive wanted to appear as a conciliator, leaving the discussions on political responsibilities for later, which served as an excuse to inoculate the guidelines of the campaign against Mazón. Sánchez said that “there will be time to look back.” And he is right, because we will all look back, in every way and from every angle. What happens is that Sánchez wants this view to be only retrospective, once he has deployed the human and material resources that were needed since last Wednesday. We will all look back, but we also look at the present and that is where the moral and political duplicity of Pedro Sánchez’s speech is clearly shown. For example, when he congratulates himself that Mazón has asked him for 5,000 military personnel, thus conveying the image of a silent, passive and late president of the Generalitat. But if the crisis is national, and if it was necessary to respond in a unitary manner, the central government did not have to wait for any request from the Valencian president, and even less avoid its responsibility for the declaration of the state of alarm. Does the central government maintain a relationship with Valencia like that of the UN with Haiti or does it have the authority and, therefore, the obligation to intervene ex officio in a national tragedy?
In Sánchez’s speech there is an explanation as euphonious as it is deceitful: “The Valencian authorities know the terrain better than anyone.” One might wonder if the State Meteorological Agency does not know Valencia; or if those responsible for ADIF or Highways do not know it either; if the Civil Guard and the National Police deployed in that area are blindfolded, or if there is no Government Delegation in Valencia. There are many “Valencian authorities” and not all of them are autonomous. What’s more, before an emergency of such dimensions that even call upon the European Union, the time comes when, in effect, it is the State Administration that must assume the leading role and centralized authority. A national crisis that has not been enough for President Sánchez to even call an extraordinary Council of Ministers.
#ABC #Editorial
