The 30 deputies of the PSOE and the two of the mixed group Adelante Andalucía have risen from their seats and left the plenary session of the Andalusian Parliament in protest against its president, the popular Jesús Aguirre, whom they openly accuse of acting as “judge and party” for favor the PP to the detriment of the rest of the groups.
It has been the outcome of a tense control session, at times tense, in which the three left-wing opposition groups have forced the president of the Board, Juan Manuel Moreno, to respond for the emergency contracts of the Andalusian Health Service ( SAS) that a Seville court is investigating for an alleged crime of prevarication, and in which the current manager, Valle García, and her two predecessors are accused.
The seats of the entire left have been left empty – the five deputies of Por Andalucía were already out at the time of the protest action by PSOE and Adelante – just at the turn of the PP spokesperson, Toni Martín, who closes the control questions to Moreno. “The irresponsibility of a parliamentary group that leaves the plenary session, I don’t know if there are precedents in the history of this Parliament,” Martín lamented, while the left-wing parliamentarians paraded outside.
In reality, there are precedents. In fact, the former president of the Andalusian PP, Javier Arenas, is the one who has the patent of the scares of opposition deputies in plenary sessions, also angry and as a protest action against the president of the Chamber on duty, during the PSOE governments.
This time is the first time that the socialists in the opposition have done so since Moreno governed six years ago. But the scene is very similar to that of then: in a control session and out of anger on the part of your honorable Members when the president of the Chamber denies the turn to a group spokesperson or a deputy for allusions.
Here the anger was preceded by the questions that the left has directed at the Andalusian president, accusing him of “political corruption” due to the SAS’s contract contracts. The spokesperson for Adelante Andalucía, José Ignacio García, has used the Intervention reports that question these awards to private clinics, “when the pandemic was already very moderate,” and has accused Moreno of keeping the manager in office. of the SAS after being charged by the judge.
“You have given 243 million euros to Asisa to pay for their electoral campaigns. Tell it to the Andalusian citizens,” he declared, at the end of his speech. Immediately, the PP spokesperson opened his microphone and, addressing the President of Parliament, asked that “the Adelante Andalucía spokesperson withdraw the direct accusation of a crime against the Government of Andalusia and the PP.”
Aguirre has allowed him to speak, although it was not his turn, nor has the popular deputy invoked the article of the regulations that allows him to intervene through allusions. He then asked García if he “agreed to withdraw the accusation” of a crime against the Board and the PP from the session log. The Adelante spokesperson, surprised, shrugged his shoulders. “I cannot accuse, those who accuse are the judges, and there is a manager accused, right?” The president has ordered the House services to “remove the imputed word from the session log,” to the astonishment of some parliamentarians.
What has pissed off the left is that minutes later the same scene was repeated, but in reverse. The spokesperson for Vox, Manuel Gavira, has focused part of his speech on talking about corruption, pointing out the PSOE of Pedro Sánchez and the union UGT Andalucía, whose former general secretary had been sentenced a day earlier by the Provincial Court of Seville to three years in prison. prison and 50 million fine for fraud in the public subsidies he received.
Gavira has called the UGT a “corrupt union” and has demanded that Moreno withdraw all the aid that the Board currently grants him. It is then that the spokesperson for the Andalusian PSOE, Ángeles Férriz, opened her microphone to also demand that the President of Parliament demand that Gavira remove the word “corrupt” from the session diary. But Férriz, unlike the PP deputy, has not been heard. Aguirre has silenced his microphone several times from his seat at the Chamber Table, warning him that “it was not his turn.”
The socialist spokesperson has tried again and again and, haltingly, she has been heard saying without a microphone that she was asking for the same thing that her PP counterpart had asked for minutes before, but Aguirre has prevented her from doing so. The socialist caucus has revolted and the noise of protests against Aguirre has been gaining volume. The one who finished Férriz’s words was the general secretary of the PSOE-A, Juan Espadas, in his turn of control questions to President Moreno.
Espadas has complained about the unequal treatment that Aguirre has given to his partner and, later, outside the plenary session, he has complained about having to use part of his time controlling the president to defend the right of his group to demand “ equal treatment.” “The president of the Andalusian Parliament acts as judge and party and cannot do so,” he said. Espadas is the one who has asked Aguirre to remove the word “corrupt” in reference to UGT, something to which he has finally agreed after reiterating it after his face to face with Moreno.
The Vox spokesperson has refused to withdraw it of his own motion – “don’t withdraw it, you can’t!” – but the president of the Chamber has acted in the same way as minutes before with the Adelante deputy.
This harsh atmosphere is necessarily linked to the PSOE’s strategy to undermine Moreno’s absolute majority after the opening of the judicial investigation into the emergency contracts. 24 hours earlier, the Minister of Health, Rocío Hernández, already had to answer questions from the opposition, clinging to the health crisis triggered by the pandemic to justify the extension of the contracts arranged with private clinics between 2021 and 2023, that a judge investigates.
Moreno has used the same story as his advisor, appealing to the pandemic, the dead, the infected and the difficulty that the health workers faced, and has accused the left – especially the PSOE – of “crossing a red line” in his opposition work. “You want this show because you need it,” he reproached Espadas, accusing him of “obediently following Ferraz’s political agenda.” “If you believe in Justice, let it run, and we will see who has to give explanations in the coming years,” he concluded.
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