The PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has opposed this Monday for the eighth time since June 2021 to investigating the drama of deaths in nursing homes during the coronavirus pandemic or to debating how to improve the functioning of these institutions. The conservatives have used their absolute majority to reject the creation of a study commission on these centers proposed by the PSOE, which joins last week's veto of a monographic plenary session on these institutions requested by Más Madrid. The last legislature (2021-2023) the conservatives opposed opening commissions of inquiry sponsored by the left on four occasions (not including requests for rectification and refusals to reconsider); to a study commission that Más Madrid proposed; and another similar one from Vox, which the far-right party ended up withdrawing due to its pressure. A cataract of denials in which there is one exception: the investigation commission that was carried out in the 2019-2021 legislature, when the PP depended on Cs and Vox, and that never finished its work because it was dissolved when the elections were brought forward.
“The PP uses its control of the Assembly to shield Ayuso and not talk about the residences,” laments Manuela Bergerot, the spokesperson for Más Madrid, the party that leads the opposition to the PP in the regional Parliament. “It remains to be seen whether his management of the residences during the pandemic is criminal, but it was without a doubt negligent and immoral,” she believes. “Because the state of the residences in the Community of Madrid after covid is a trickle of scandals: rotten food, poor nutrition, lack of staff, precariousness of staff and, as we have seen recently, lack of safety measures in the event of emergencies,” she adds. And she emphasizes: “All of this is the result of a model low cost that seeks the benefit of a few companies at the expense of the abuse of the elderly. This model must be urgently replaced by another that puts well-being and human rights at the center.”
More than 7,000 residents died as a result of triage protocols that prevented their transfer to hospitals during the worst moments of the pandemic. This veto was most intense between March 9 and April 5, 2020 and especially significant between March 16 and 29. As hospitals freed up beds, geriatricians stopped acting as filters and sick residents were readmitted, although this situation varied from one hospital to another. Clarifying the details of what happened in the Assembly is, for now, a chimera, as is studying improvements in centers that return again and again to the headlines due to problems with food, damage to facilities, or a fire. which caused the death of three residents in mid-February.
“We do not want revenge, nor political bait, nor do it sound like we are seeking revenge or sending any politician from previous legislatures to the wall,” explains Jesús Celada, one of the trusted politicians of the leader of the Madrid socialists, Juan Lobato. “Not even close,” he emphasizes, after seeing how the study commission proposed by the PSOE did not go ahead. “We are not seeking to criminalize anyone,” he insists.
“We are shocked that four years after the pandemic, the situation in the residences is worse, with rotten food, ceilings that are falling, payrolls that are not paid, and families that are not given room in decision-making,” argues after the visits of the socialist deputies to the centers. “The residences have gotten worse,” he diagnoses, adding: “We believe that the PP is interested in politicizing this. No matter what we talk about, Ayuso is the victim, the attacked one. “They don't want to look for a social solution to a serious issue.”
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Ayuso understands that all the rejected initiatives sought to wear her down politically and not advance improvements for residents. In this context, the PP has left defining gestures (the entire Government, except for one advisor, left the plenary session in 2022, when reactivating the investigation commission was being debated) and has used all its political influence to block any parliamentary investigation.
First, in June 2020, Ayuso announced an internal investigation that ended up becoming “an informal consultation” between departments to share data, as revealed by Cadena SER after a request for information made under the transparency law. Then, in 2022, he pressured Vox to withdraw its decisive support for the reactivation of the investigative commission promoted in the 2019-2021 legislature, and which was stopped cold by the electoral advance. “I would ask Vox if they are going to join the left again to twist and use the pain of families,” he said. That same year, he ignored an agreement from the Madrid City Council to urge the regional Executive to investigate what happened. Finally, the Baroness used the majority of the PP to block any initiative in the regional Parliament.
“We are not going to enter the revisionist game of the left nor are we going to participate in the initiatives that raise a shadow of doubt about the nursing homes in the Community of Madrid,” explained the PP, which in 2021, when it was in a minority , saw how full monographs on the management of covid, vaccination and Filomena. “It is the home of many people, they work very well and are run by magnificent professionals.”
A positioning to which, on this occasion, Vox has joined. “The Socialist Party wants to carry out a media trial on an issue that has dozens of judicial cases open at this moment,” the party explains about the study commission. “Their objective is revenge, not the improvement of services.” No regional government has supported investigative commissions of this type, not even those on the left, Ayuso often recalls. And for that reason, he comes to argue, neither does the one from Madrid.
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