Ayuso's PP refuses to eliminate the term “handicapped” from the Madrid statute until there is “a different majority in Congress”

The PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has decided to use its absolute majority in the Madrid Assembly to veto the elimination of the term “handicapped” of the statute of regional autonomy. Although the conservatives seemed to have reached an agreement with Más Madrid and PSOE to undertake the reform, their parliamentary spokesperson, Carlos Díaz-Pache, announced this Monday that they will not allow the change to come to fruition until the PP controls the Congress of Deputies. The reason? That a reform of this type must be endorsed by the Lower House, where right now the PSOE and its allies have more votes than the PP and Vox, which would give them the opportunity to “play” with its content, and modify it, adding reforms without agreement in the autonomous Assembly, according to the argument of the conservative spokesperson.

“The PP is committed to the defense of people with disabilities,” said Díaz Pache in the weekly press conference that follows the meeting of the Parliament's spokespersons board. “We are not going to support the proposal of the PSOE and Más Madrid because once it is approved, the statute would reach Congress, where Pedro Sánchez and the independentists are waiting to play with it,” he maintained, without specifying what he bases this statement on. . “We know positively that the Catalan independence movement has set its sights on the Community of Madrid, that the Government of Pedro Sánchez gives in to everything that the separatists ask for and we are not going to give Sánchez the status of autonomy as a negotiating weapon,” he continued, without detailing how he knows that Junts or ERC are targeting the Madrid statute. “This reform is intended to be a Trojan horse for Pedro Sánchez and separatism to play with the statute, and we will have to wait for a different majority in Congress to carry it out.”

Without providing any evidence during the press conference, the PP spokesperson considered that the reform could be used to introduce changes to the statute that could affect the fiscal and economic policy of Díaz Ayuso's Executive.

It all started at the end of January. The PSOE spokesperson, Juan Lobato, then proposed eliminating the concept of disabled from the statute, in line with the modification that had been made to the Spanish Constitution, and which had the sponsorship of the PP to eliminate the term “disabled” and replace it with that of “people with disabilities”.

The Madrid conservatives were open to this from the beginning, but they advanced that other issues could be included in the negotiation of the reform: changing the name of the Assembly to the Parliament of Madrid, incorporating the figure of the Decree Law for emergency situations or lowering the number of deputies in the Chamber.

To prevent the negotiations from being blocked, the parliamentary groups of the left (PSOE and Más Madrid) registered on March 21 the reform to replace the term “handicapped” with “people with disabilities”, waiting for the popular ones to finally add their proposals in the modification of the Statute. A bet that has now come to nothing, since the PP's refusal prevents the necessary majority from being achieved to achieve change.

Veto to the investigation of the hoax against EL PAÍS

In addition, this Monday the Chamber Board has vetoed a handful of appearances by members of the Government requested by Más Madrid and aimed at clarifying how the chief of staff of the regional president, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, promoted a hoax against two journalists from the newspaper EL COUNTRY.

After learning that this senior official leaked to related media the photo and name of two editors of this newspaper who were investigating a ramification of the case of alleged tax fraud that affects Ayuso's partner, falsely accusing them of harassing minors during their investigations, the Manuela Bergerot's party demanded to know how the information from the informants had reached Rodríguez's hands, and how he had distributed it among related media to achieve its publication.

To this end, Más Madrid requested the appearances of the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Local Administration; of the Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Interior; of the General Director of Security; and the General Director of Media. None of these requests have passed the filter of the Chamber Table this Monday, where the PP enjoys an absolute majority, having four members, one from Más Madrid, another from the PSOE and one more from Vox.

Subscribe here to our daily newsletter about Madrid.

_