Nobody in the PP defends that the strategy carried out until now by that party in the investigation commissions of the Koldo case or on the purchase of medical supplies during the pandemic, in the Senate and Congress, is going as they expected. Quite the contrary. Internally, only criticisms and justifications, political and personal, are heard. And the most serious thing is that the main figures of the Government and the PSOE who were intended to be cornered have already appeared on the commissions: Koldo García, José Luis Ábalos, Santos Cerdán, Salvador Illa and Francina Armengol. The popular party apparently keeps the threat of summoning the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez, to the Senate, as her last major trump card, because from their interrogations they have not extracted any conclusive evidence that the Koldo case has any ramifications for the Government or the PSOE beyond the relations of that former advisor with the business leaders of the plot. The socialists are now studying going on to counterattack.
On May 6, when the PP summoned José Luis Ábalos to the commission of the Koldo case In the Senate, before entering the room, the former socialist minister crossed paths in a hallway with the now vice president of the Upper House, the popular Javier Maroto, and they chatted amicably for a while. After three hours of interrogation in the session, where Ábalos felt increasingly comfortable to the point of extending his arms to refuel them on the adjacent chairs, the former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE said goodbye, thanking their honors for the treatment received. Something was feared that did not happen. And he wasn’t the only one.
The senators, from different parties but also those from the PP, treated him with manners like one of their own who had fallen into disgrace. Already at the start, at the doors of the venue, Ábalos even stopped to greet the PP senator, Luis Santamaría, who had acted as spokesperson minutes before and who after his machine-gunned questionnaire barely elicited any news.
What happened with Ábalos was not very different from what happened at the meeting with Santos Cerdán, his successor at the head of Organization in the PSOE and the person who imported Koldo García from Navarra for logistical functions in the party, who is accused by the collection of alleged million-dollar bribes. It was similar to what happened when the former Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, appeared or this past Monday with Francina Armengol, president of the Cortes, to report on a contract signed by the Balearic Islands health service during the period in which she presided. that community. The only really tense session was the one carried out by Koldo García himself in the Senate, but more because of his manner and his defiant attitude than because of the difficulty of the PP’s questions.
The affected senators admit it privately: they are not at all satisfied. And relevant leaders of the PP assure it: “The commissions are not going well for us.” There have been coordination meetings to try to improve the situation but, for now, those results have not been seen. PP sources in the Cortes confirm: “There is a lack of a joint approach and a lack of information about the appointments of our spokespersons.” In an internal chat of popular parliamentarians this message was forwarded: “Someone should resign or be dismissed due to Alfonso Serrano’s disaster in the investigation commission. “He should be removed and whoever chose him for that role should stop.”
Alfonso Serrano, right-hand man in the Madrid PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is, along with Luis Santamaría, one of the senators to whom the PP entrusted the task of directing the interrogations in the Koldo commission that was set up in that Chamber with the aim of demonstrate that the case of that advisor was actually about the PSOE, the Government and Pedro Sánchez. None of that has been evident so far. What almost everyone has observed, also within the PP, is that the popular spokespersons had their presentations written and prepared, with endless chains of questions, for which they did not expect answers or contributions that would allow them to delve into some dark corner of the appearing.
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The parliamentarians who know they have been targeted defend themselves: “This type of interrogation is not easy, for many reasons. Because if you have worked and studied the summary, you have a lot of information and a limited amount of time to ask questions in front of a person who can extend and ramble wherever he wants, because you know that he is not going to answer what you want to know and what What you are after is to record that you touch and ask everything so that the party does not reproach you for anything, because some are positions that have been in politics for years, are very battered and know how to handle themselves well in these situations. And because there is still a lot of information to be known about the confiscated devices.” Others also admit that they know some of those appearing so well, from friendly private conversations in the Cortes, on the sets and from similar organic functions, that it is difficult for them to put them on the ropes.
Luis Santamaría, in any case, confesses that he is “more than reasonably satisfied” with his work because he understands that it has served, for now, to show “that what Salvador Illa called incidents in the contracting were errors resulting from negligence and that this negligence “It translated into public resources that went into the pockets of a corrupt plot and not to buy medical supplies.” And he defends that the interrogations have served to make some of those charges recognize “that they received Koldo, because they knew that he spoke on behalf of Ábalos”, to “have the certainty that a person who describes himself as only capable of “Cerdán and the PSOE offered a professional and personal exit pact” to the former minister.
The PSOE believes that the “balloon” is “puncturing”
“The desperation and helplessness is absolute and evident on the faces of the PP spokespersons, they are like knocked out players, who try to score a goal and can’t but don’t realize that they are playing with the wrong ball. They settle for the ball having at least one bounce or bounce, which is to say that certain speakers knew or had once spoken to Koldo, even if it was not about masks, but when the microphones turn off they themselves know that there is nothing to scratch and how the bad losers attack the rules, the way the commission works, or the referee, who is the president and his regulation of the times,” interprets socialist deputy Mercedes González.
“The PP tried to build a balloon and it is being punctured,” adds the PSOE spokesperson in the Congress sessions, Juan Antonio González, who warns of their next steps: “It is going to take a long time and as we saw on Monday after Armengol’s exhibition, now we want to know why the new president of the Balearic Islands, Marga Prohens, let time pass to demand the questionable item in the mask contract there.
The PSOE is already scheduling for the end of May to summon Prohens and other officials of the current Balearic executive of the PP in Congress. The popular ones are still not clear about where they want to go in their Senate commission, although they continue to leave in the air the option of calling Begoña Gómez, Pedro Sánchez’s wife, at the time, when they are interested. In the PSOE they point out that some senior PP official has sounded them out to see how to close both commissions without harming themselves. EL PAÍS has tried without success to obtain the opinion of the PP spokesperson in the Congressional commission, Elías Bendodo.
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