Rocío Monasterio speaks about Isabel Díaz Ayuso with an open heart, because the alliance that led Vox to support the PP executive between 2019 and 2023 is already broken. “What we would like is for Mrs. Ayuso's Government to stop intervening in the institutions “, he says in the regional Assembly. “There has been an intervention by the Chamber of Accounts. There has been an intervention by the Transparency Council. There is brutal Telemadrid control,” she exemplifies. “Unfortunately, we are on the path to total censorship.” The paradox, says the Vox spokesperson, is evident. According to her opinion, Ayuso is using her absolute majority to do the same thing with the institutions that must act as a counterweight to her power in Madrid of what she accuses Pedro Sánchez (PSOE) of in Spain. And it is just the beginning: Ayuso plans to exploit his absolute majority by approving 158 regulations until 2027 and, in the midst of the crisis opened by the case of alleged tax fraud that affects his partner, he will show all his power this weekend, when he will bring together hundreds of councilors at the first inter-municipal meeting in the history of the Madrid PP, which he also presides over.
Although the PP rejects the comparison launched by Vox, the truth is that the baroness has gone from depending on Cs or Vox to govern to the fact that the polls have given her the freedom to reform the region's key institutions to suit her in six months. She did it in December, and through a law on which the Constitutional Court will now have to rule after an appeal registered by the PSOE. Everything happens like this.
Friday, November 10, 2023. With the afternoon sliding at full speed towards the weekend, the PP announces two initiatives in the Assembly that will completely change the political landscape of the region. On the one hand, a reform of the law against LGTBIphobia and the trans law of the Community of Madrid that the Baroness had pending since 2019 is advancing. On the other, it is proposed to approve a norm that involves changing a dozen laws at once, thus facilitating the control of the Executive over the institutions that must supervise it: Chamber of Accounts, Transparency Council or Telemadrid. Just four months after being sworn in as president for the third time, the decision portrays that Díaz Ayuso is ready to apply the roller of absolute majority without hesitation.
“The absolute majority has made a mistake with absolutism,” the opposition reacts upon learning that the appointment of the general director of Madrid's public radio and television goes from depending on a vote in the plenary session of Parliament to a decision by the Shareholders' Meeting of the company (where only the regional government is represented) after a proposal from the entity's Board of Directors (which does reflect the majorities of the Chamber) and a suitability opinion from a parliamentary commission (which can be approved without agreement, by a simple majority).
“We were innovative, autonomous and annoying,” summarizes Antonio Rovira, member of the transparency council, after seeing how the body, fully independent and attached to the Madrid Assembly (where all parties negotiate their three members), is replaced by another linked to the Executive (which will appoint its president and sole member, who must then be endorsed by the Assembly).
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“This Chamber of Accounts is an instrument at the service of the people of Madrid that has to be useful for the Government, to provide security,” says, finally, Joaquín Leguina, former president of Madrid with the PSOE who ends up elevated to the presidency of the Chamber of Accounts. Accounts for his affinity with Ayuso, and that he comes to the position after a legal change that makes it easier for the majority party to control the body, and, therefore, choose who supervises it without agreeing with the rest of the parties, as it had to do before.
No one portrays the political metamorphosis of Isabel Díaz Ayuso better than Isabel Díaz Ayuso herself. “This is our reality today: a Government that is born from the pact, dedicated to permanent dialogue, to the search for common objectives with broad-spectrum solutions,” says in August 2019, when he came to power for the first time after losing the elections and thanks to the support of PP, Cs and Vox. “I am fully aware that the responsibility I have is even greater and that I will humbly assume the successes and mistakes I may make,” aims for June 2023already using the first person when she remains president thanks to an absolute majority (70 seats and 47.3% of the votes) that catapults her in the conservative saints to the levels of Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón (55 and 51%) and Esperanza Aguirre (72 and 51.7%).
In fact, in many aspects, the presidency of Díaz Ayuso has been a journey in time to return to the shares of power that Esperanza Aguirre had, and that the PP lost with the minority government of Cristina Cifuentes (2015-2018). But who accumulated more power? Aguirre or Ayuso?
“Without a doubt, Ayuso,” responds a socialist with many three-year terms in Madrid politics behind him. “It has been adapting to its control bodies that already existed in Aguirre's time with a lot of dependence, but with somewhat less capacity for intervention (RTVM, Chamber of Accounts…) with what they have done to ensure absolute control of new ones. such as the Transparency Council [que no existía en época de Aguirre]”, go on. “In addition, although his control does not depend on that, he has lowered the “political profile” everywhere. [de las personas a cargo] replacing it with a group of followers without much political and, in some cases, technical background.”
Because free from the influence of the national leadership, Díaz Ayuso has dispensed with proper names of the PP (Enrique López, Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, David Pérez and Enrique Ossorio) to form a government of technicians in which there is no figure of political weight that disputes the spotlight or can discuss the political line.
In parallel, and unlike what happened to Aguirre with Gallardón, there is no internal counterweight in the regional party, since Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida has assumed a subordinate role after the internal war that ended in the departure of Pablo Casado. for questioning a commission charged by the president's brother in exchange for providing a company with the material it needed to fulfill a contract with the Community.
And Ayuso herself has chosen or endorsed the candidates for mayor of the main municipalities in the region, among which is Judith Piquet, promoted as councilor of Alcalá de Henares and president of the Federation of Municipalities of Madrid.
Added to this is the fact that the Assembly's oversight is being limited, in the opinion of the opposition, which has asked for protection from the Constitutional Court and has staged a symbolic protest: Ana Cuartero (Vox) resigned in February as president of the hiring commission to the considering that the Parliament Board, controlled by the PP, prevented it from supervising government contracts.
Faced with this, Díaz Ayuso and the PP demand that the opposition “stop lying.” They assure that at the head of the Transparency Council there will be “officials” who “do not owe anything to any party” and to whom, therefore, “independence is assumed.” They remember that in the case of the Chamber of Accounts, the previous model is changed to avoid a blockage in the election of councilors. And they deny influencing Telemadrid. What is clear is that the PP has used its absolute majority to reformulate all these institutions to suit its needs in the first six months of the new mandate of Díaz Ayuso, who on Saturday will show all his organic muscle: he will close the first inter-municipal meeting with a speech of the PP of Madrid with an event in Las Rozas to which hundreds of councilors have been summoned.
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