It is said that many books are published in Spain. Some maintain that there are too many and that bookstores cannot accommodate all the new items. If so, there is already another copy to add to the shelf. A book is published that compiles the main parliamentary speeches of Mariano Rajoy. No one was aware that there was a real need to deliver such an example of oratory to posterity. Apparently, it was not enough for people to make jokes on social networks with the phrase “it is the neighbor who elects the mayor and it is the mayor who wants the neighbors to be the mayor.”
But before the jokes begin, you should know that this is an initiative of the Congress of Deputies to publish the speeches of former presidents of the Government and of the Chamber. It has already been done with Zapatero, Bono and Pastor. Institutions always dedicate time and money to honor their former presidents. They will think that if they don’t do it, who is going to do it. And if we talk about speeches in Parliament, the bad thing is that this does not include those moments when politicians like Rajoy, and also Zapatero, gave their best. This happened in the reply speeches to the spokespersons of the other groups. The initial speech, usually endless, used to be difficult to digest.
The occasion deserved to put a parenthesis on the turbulent Spanish politics. It would have been especially appropriate in this case, because the Galician likes to say that he does not like “noise” at all. He has commented on it many times, even at electoral campaign rallies. His aversion to “messes,” as he called them, is well known. If he knows it, he who was president of a Government in which Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría and María Dolores de Cospedal were throwing murderous glances at each other.
However, the Popular Party is not here to give even a minute to elegance. The event was presided over by Francina Armengol, president of Congress, to which she was not obliged, but that did not matter at all. Also at the table was Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who brought out the heavy artillery from very early on. A few complimentary phrases towards Rajoy and then to take out the knives. The everyday thing.
“A statesman thinks more about the next generations than about the next elections,” he said at the beginning. Immediately, he made it clear that he is not a statesman, because he does not think about anything other than forcing the early end of the legislature in any way possible. It seemed that the references to the Government of Pedro Sánchez were going to be generic, but it was a false alarm. “There are politicians who misappropriate the legislative power with tricks and buses,” he commented, referring to the defeat of the Government on Wednesday in Congress when the validation of the decree that included the increase in pensions and other issues was voted.
Although he has already spoken about the matter on several occasions, he insisted on turning the book presentation into a control session. He said that his party is in favor of increasing pensions, but not of “giving away apartments in Paris”, due to the transfer to the PNV of the Cervantes Institute headquarters building, purchased in 1936 with money from Basque nationalists and later seized by the Gestapo. German. He continued stating that he is in favor of aid to those affected by the DANA in Valencia, but not of “giving aid to squatters” (this is what the PP calls the freezing of evictions for vulnerable families).
If the opportunity to remember the speeches of a former president allowed one to show a little class, that was a temptation that Feijóo was not willing to fall into.
Rajoy was not limited to nostalgia either. Of all his speeches, the last one he gave stood out, the one on the motion of censure after the Gürtel ruling and which led to his dismissal. It looks like he’s still bleeding from that wound. He quoted a phrase from the socialist deputy who presented the motion and his response. “Is the socialist party clean?” he said in the speech with the frankly singular argument that the PP had nothing to do with the Gürtel. And then he mentioned the name: “That deputy was Mr. Ábalos Meco. “This is how history is written.”
He also had time to throw another cape at his party to defend that if a Government does not have the votes to approve the budgets, it should throw in the towel. “When it is not possible to approve them, it is time to dissolve” (Parliament). In his case, he had to extend the accounts on two occasions, although only for a few months. The budgets for 2017 and 2018, when he did not have an absolute majority, were presented in April of the current year.
Rajoy made his usual defense of the rule of law elevated to its highest expression: “Democracy is that there is nothing above the law.” It is difficult to know how this fits in with Operation Kitchen for which its Minister of the Interior, Jorge Fernández Díaz, will have to go to the dock, not to mention the political espionage network of the Catalan independentists and Podemos set up from that Ministry and which is now being investigated by the National Court.
By then, Armengol must have been thinking that he could have spent Wednesday afternoon doing something else. A book of Rajoy’s speeches presented in Congress could have a certain air of an institutional event. Feijóo and Rajoy preferred to dedicate it to the usual political fight. The one that consists, to use the football language that Rajoy likes so much, in which the ball passes, but the player does not pass.
#stop #shooting #pay #tribute #Rajoy
