The DANA tragedy has taken away many things. In the Popular Party, they are willing to ride that destructive wave. This weekend, his Twitter account did something that is not common in the game: directly accuse a high military command. There are taboos that for one reason or another remained intact, but support for Carlos Mazón requires eliminating any complex or custom. The head of the UME, General Francisco Javier Marcos, had to be discredited for having dared to affirm that the emergency unit was carrying out preparatory work even before receiving the order from the Valencian Government to move to the Utiel-Requena area. The objective: to paint him as a puppet of the Government that is not credible.
If not even the Army is sacred from the point of view of the right, other institutions or organizations can now prepare to accept the type of treatment that the AEMET and the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation have suffered. Now it is the CSIC’s turn. Don’t believe those scientists who were going to get away. It is not even required that any of his statements contradict what Mazón announced. The propaganda value of his actions is not disregarded in the attempt to present the leader of the party in the Valencian Community as a victim of the dark dealings of others.
The Mazón Government communicated to Las Provincias a great exclusive that the conservative newspaper put on its front page this Monday: “The Government wants to charge for analyzing the DANA sludge.” It had received a report from the CSIC in which it proposed carrying out an investigation of the sludge that must be removed from the affected localities with a view to its transfer to an area where it will not have a negative impact. The report detailed the planned expenditure, 320,000 euros. At no time was it said who should pay that amount, and it is known that the Administration is usually quite explicit when it wants something to be paid.
Without knowing whether the interpretation is from the Mazón Government or from the newspaper, the article had no doubts: “The information could only have been included with the obvious intention of having its cost paid.” In the words of a PP deputy: “If they want more resources, let them pay them.” A message with which to support the theory that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has abandoned the Valencians and that was retweeted by the party account.
The CSIC was forced to deny it on Monday. It will not invoice the Generalitat or any other Administration for the advisory work it may carry out, as it did not do after the eruption of the La Palma volcano. Regarding the DANA sludge report, he said that it will cost a total of about 900,000 euros, “a cost that, again, he will assume entirely.”
No matter how many acts of contrition that national leaders of the PP are making anonymously about Mazón’s barely defensible conduct, they leave the house in public with the dagger in their hand. Military and scientists? Surely they are poisoned by the sanchismo virus.
In the offensive to save Mazón, Alberto Núñez Feijóo plays an essential role. After many doubts, he finally resigned himself to publicly giving all his support to Mazón, even when it was already known about the three-hour meal on the day of the tragedy. “Mazón has been there from the beginning, he has shown his face from the first moment and he is the only one who has made self-criticism,” he said last week.
Then came Mazón’s appearance in Les Corts and it was clear that there was little self-criticism, because everyone else was to blame. This Monday, in a speech at the National Board of Directors of the PP, Feijóo included some words that many media outlets highlighted as criticism of his fellow member: “Trust, when it has suffered, must be regained.” It is a phrase that could be found in a book of philosophical quotes and maxims. It is all that the president of the PP had to say in a negative tone about a Government like the Valencian one completely overcome by events.
Not as much emphasis was placed on what he said immediately before. “You have to continue showing your face, helping the people, listening to them because anger and disappointment must be understood, giving explanations, recognizing mistakes…”, and other things that were intended to be complimentary towards the Valencian PP. And the phrase that closed it: “This is the path you have followed until now and the one you must continue.” In short, you are already doing very well.
The PP does not want people to talk about what happened on October 29, about the weather warnings that Mazón received and to which he did not pay the necessary attention, about his three-hour lunch to shorten the future of A Punt, about his lack of communication with mayors of the affected areas, his very late arrival at the Cecopi meeting and the delay in launching an alert to all cell phones that could have saved lives. His priority is to put Teresa Ribera in the spotlight, whom he had not remembered until a week after the flood.
In the end, it is the traditional Valencian Popular Party with other leaders and it will generate the same headlines as in the past. The emergency situation requires contracts to be awarded as quickly as possible. Some beneficiaries have appeared in corruption news before. Mazón has awarded the repair of a dam seriously damaged by DANA to a businessman who was convicted in the Gürtel case and who confessed to having financed ‘box B’ of the Valencian PP. It may seem logical or unprecedented, but what is certain is that it will not surprise anyone.
For Feijóo, there is a dark cloud that is beginning to approach. Óscar Puente has not tired of his good side, the one that explains without fuss and in detail each progress in the reconstruction of roads and tracks, but now His wild side has begun to show. There are ministers who blow and blow and only raise a small breeze. Puente snorts and you already have a category one hurricane.
In an interview on RNE, the minister doubted the credibility of Mazón in his versions about the three-hour meal: “I am not going to go into the role that each one has played, but there are even those who, being at the highest level of responsibility of the crisis, for four hours you don’t know where he was,” he said. “Yes, we know,” the journalist commented. “His version is known. Another thing is whether we believe it or not,” Puente responded.
The PP did not dare to ask Puente questions last week in the control session of Congress. For this Wednesday, they don’t do any either. They don’t want to wake up The Beast.
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