“Mentre dinava…”

Valencian society demands the resignation of the head of the Consell

Mazón mounts an exculpatory plea for his actions in the DANA catastrophe

In one week we have experienced one of the most massive protests that can be remembered in the streets of Valencia, in which tens of thousands of people called for the resignation of the president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Carlos Mazón, for his negligence in managing the alert. in response to the floods caused on October 29 by DANA. We have since overcome a second meteorological episode of isolated depression at high levels that, this time, caused the alerts to go off, but did not generate more damage. And now Mazón’s appearance has arrived in the Valencian Courts, this Friday, to shield himself behind a story that offends common sense.

All this while the cleaning and recovery tasks continue in the affected towns and the record of fatalities reaches 216, with 16 people who have not yet been able to be found. This list of deaths gives an idea of ​​the magnitude of the tragedy, in which nearly half, 104, were people over 70 years of age and nine were children. Paiporta, with 45 victims, and Catarroja, with 25, are the municipalities that have had the most deaths.

Mazón has evaded in parliament, more than two weeks after the flood, assuming any responsibility in the response to the catastrophe and has alleged that “the entire system failed.” In an attitude that he and the PP adopted a few days after the floods, the head of the Consell has accused the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation and the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet) of having provided insufficient information. The head of the Emergencies, then, entrenches himself in a fantasy in which he, in reality, would have been the victim of a plot of nature combined with the failure of the planned protocols (“the monstrous ravine caused by an atmospheric phenomenon that exceeded Aemet’s worst forecasts,” according to what he said).

Mazón’s deplorable, although expected, position, given the background of his training in this type of trances, in which he traces the PP’s strategy in previous catastrophes and trusts his own lies, is accompanied by a remodeling of the Consell that consists in creating an Emergency Department and a vice presidency to coordinate the reconstruction after DANA. It is unlikely that this maneuver will stop criticism of the actions of the Valencian Government, with its president at the helm, given the total absence of self-criticism on its part. Because, from what has happened, it does not follow that the emergency protocols and mechanisms failed, as the cornered president alleges, but rather that those who had, with him at the helm, the obligation to activate them in a timely manner failed miserably.

Opposition groups put their finger on that wound. Both the socialists and Compromís demanded Mazón’s resignation during the plenary session in which he appeared for a long intervention that he had completely prepared on a large stack of pages. The once talkative president stuck to a written script that, as the spokesperson for the Valencians, Joan Baldoví, pointed out, seemed “not to have been written by his advisors but by his lawyers,” thinking about an eventual defense before the courts in which he would sooner rather than later. How late the matter will be. The PSPV spokesperson, José Muñoz, whose group had not requested the resignation of the president until now, demanded his dismissal, the appointment of a “technical” or “transitional” head of the Consell and the calling of elections in 2025. The general secretary of the socialists and Minister of Science, Innovation and Universities, Diana Morant, gathered her executive and demanded that the PP dismiss Mazón.

Everyone remembered those hours on October 29 in which Mazón was absent from the Integrated Operational Coordination Center (Cecopi) because he was at a meal. An episode that the head of the Consell dismissed with haughtiness saying: “I kept my agenda fully aware of the situation.” He was so “fully aware” that his team hid the reason for that agape and tried to camouflage it for days until he attributed it to a meeting with a journalist to offer her the direction of the Valencian radio and television station À Punt. Mazón’s lies and omissions about the DANA were many, about the emergency protocols, the warnings from the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation and the information from the State Meteorological Agency, the Cecopi call, the warnings (or rather the absence of them) to the city councils of the danger that was looming and the maintenance of their own agenda when there had been flooding and serious problems in the affected areas for hours.

This last aspect, which concerns Mazón’s personal responsibility as the “sole command” of emergencies, has been marked in public opinion in a way that will go down in the history of infamy in the memory of Valencians. “How could he be eating quietly while Utiel and Requena were flooded? How could he be missing while we Valencians were facing the worst catastrophe?” Baldoví reproached him. In the gigantic demonstration on December 9 in Valencia, a slogan was chanted that will bounce over and over again on the memory of this event:“Mentre dinava, el poble s’ofegava”. While he was eating, the people were drowning… It is an image that cannot be erased, which will haunt Mazón and the Valencian PP for a long time.

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#Mentre #dinava..