One more Wednesday at the office, but after a terrible night in the Valencian Community. The Popular Party arrived at nine in the morning with the usual ammunition, which this time included the case of Íñigo Errejón. Maybe he had doubts, but from the start his deputies started shooting. It didn’t take them long to realize that they were going to be sad. But they tried. They asked three questions with which they were not looking for information, but rather to give a shout. The normal thing in the control session. As an example, Ester Muñoz’s question: “How long are they going to continue supporting corruption?”
Twenty minutes into the session, the PP leadership decided to put on the brakes and ask for the suspension of the plenary session. The majority of the government accepted it for the control session, but not for the second plenary session called immediately afterwards, whose only item on the agenda was to approve the reform of the election of the RTVE Board of Directors. Alberto Núñez Feijóo saw that he had fallen into the trap and reacted angrily. He made it very clear in an appearance before journalists in which he did not accept questions. Logically, they would have asked him why he used the control session to his advantage until he realized the consequences it would have for his image.
The sequence of events was revealing. Cuca Gamarra referred at the beginning to the tragedy of Valencia to end by giving a circus turn towards the planned issue. In the face of this emergency, institutions are very important, he said, and “hence the relevance of this question.” Double somersault and there goes the question: “What institution will the Government attack tomorrow?” María Jesús Montero responded that it would be convenient to show citizens at this time the unity of the political parties, especially “those that have government powers.”
Gamarra continued pushing with what he had prepared from home. “Today is not the day,” Montero responded. PP deputy Rafael Hernando was heard saying out loud: “Do you want to close Congress?” Hernando dedicates himself to making comments in each plenary session, especially when everyone else is silent. He is a bit of a contender for improvised comic interventions. He did not realize that very soon his party would try to do just that.
Among the PP seats, the desire to start a fight like other Wednesdays was not appreciated. It was clearer in the second question. Jaime de Olano’s mission was to punish Yolanda Díaz’s liver based on what he knew about Errejón: “If the plenary session has not been suspended, the opposition’s obligation is to control the Government.” “You are the ones from the Nevenka case,” Díaz told him. Under other circumstances, the PP benches would have lit up upon hearing this. Not this time. His doubts grew.
Third question with Ester Muñoz. “Today is the only day I would like not to ask anything,” he said. He stated that they had time to suspend the plenary session, but immediately turned to the issue of Errejón in order to accuse Díaz of covering it up. He did the same in the replica.
When the vice president raised the third volume of the ruling of the Gürtel of the National Court – she had brought it from the office –, the Genoa headquarters rehabilitated with black money and the accusation of the number three of Díaz Ayuso, it was already too much for the PP. That had to be cut. Hitting, but less than usual, was not working for him.
Its spokesman, Miguel Tellado, stood up to request the suspension of the plenary session “out of respect for the victims of DANA.” Cuca Gamarra listened to him with the look of attending a funeral. Francina Armengol convened the Board and recalled that no one had requested to cancel the session before it began. The PP could also have refused to ask the questions in the chamber, making the control session meaningless.
The plenary session had begun with a minute of silence for the victims of Valencia. Finally, the Congress Board canceled the rest of the control session and then the committees scheduled for the day were suspended. The PSOE held the second plenary session dedicated to the debate and vote on the renewal decree of the RTVE Council, a controversial decision, but conditioned by the interim position, put politely, in which the company’s leadership finds itself. The mandate of Concepción Cascajosa, elected in March as president, only had a duration of six months, which were completed at the end of September.
The reform would put an end to this situation of paralysis. Evidently, it is also done so that the Government parties and their allies secure the majority of the Council for six years. The list of its future members that was later revealed reveals the scandalous presence of several candidates without television experience or without any experience in media management.
It was the reason that the PP used to resume the style of the control session that had been cut off early. Núñez Feijóo was furious with a speech to journalists who could not do anything other than write down his message. Maybe he thought that answering questions would be disrespectful to the victims.
He stated that the decision to carry out the debate on the RTVE decree was intolerable: “This attitude is despicable.” “We have completely paralyzed political activity in Spain due to fewer victims than those that have occurred now,” he said before again hammering the Government saying that there is “no example of moral turpitude like this.”
Although the PP was clear that it was necessary to cancel any type of political activity in Parliament that day, that did not count for Feijóo’s declaration of clearly political intention. Not even to ask questions beforehand about the Errejón case.
The PP leader also announced that he intended to visit the Valencian Community as soon as possible to “be with them (the region’s authorities), shake their hands and express my solidarity.” Anyone would think that at this time the priority of the Valencian Government, chaired by Carlos Mazón, of the PP, should be saving people and mitigating the effects of the catastrophe. Not in receiving the president of the party.
In the afternoon, Feijóo got the image he was looking for. In the absence of Valencia, he visited the advanced command post in Letur, Albacete, in the afternoon, accompanied by the president of the PP in Castilla-La Mancha, and met with the president of the region, Emiliano García-Page. The visit to Valencia is scheduled for Thursday morning and there you will be able to take photos with Mazón, who now greatly needs the support of his party. Pedro Sánchez will also be in Valencia on Thursday. The race to take the photo exists in these cases, as well as the need for everyone, governments and opposition, to show their solidarity in person. For what it may be worth.
When the plenary session began, it was already known that the number of confirmed deaths was fifty and that it was inevitable that it would increase in the following hours. Following an official declaration of mourning, such as the one the Government approved shortly before lunch, activity in parliaments is suspended, like many others. It is never clear how it benefits victims of a disaster if deputies go home or to party headquarters. Obviously, in the ministries and autonomous governments involved, all efforts are dedicated to warding off the effects of the catastrophe. Parliamentarians have no assigned tasks in these emergency tasks.
There is a comparison that is hurtful. The deputies could not do their job, but the day before no one thought that many workers should have left their companies or shopping centers earlier to avoid being trapped by the storm. They didn’t let them.
The PP feared that a control session with the temperature at the highest would cause its rivals to bring up the political responsibilities of the Mazón Government, however premature it might seem at the time. Five days before, AEMET experts were already warning that a DANA was approaching with the “potential” of becoming one of the most dangerous ever experienced. “It is likely that in points of the Valencian Community and Murcia there will be more than 150 mm of rain,” it was said three days before. At ten in the morning on Tuesday, the AEMET declared that the situation was a red alert: “Extreme caution! The danger is extreme. “Do not go near channels or boulevards.”
Predicting these extremely localized extreme phenomena accurately is very difficult to do, but experts were recommending taking preventive measures and not getting complacent.
In an appearance that he will now regret, Mazón made a statement on Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. announcing that the worst had passed and that at six in the afternoon the storm would have reduced its intensity in the Valencian region.
At 8:12 p.m. on Tuesday, the alert from the Valencian Generalitat automatically reached all mobile phones in the province of Valencia. It was already too late and hundreds of people were trapped in serious or dramatic circumstances. “I had to open the (car) window to get my head out because the water was almost up to my chest. I put my cell phone up so I could communicate. At eight or so, when I was up to my neck in water for an hour and swallowing mud, the Civil Protection alert sounded,” one of the people who suffered the effects of the flood told this newspaper.
To close the day, Mazón said on Twitter at 11:00 p.m. that the emergency telephone number 112 “is not collapsed” when at that time thousands of people were trying to call that number without receiving a response and without alternative communication methods working.
In addition to putting a black bullet on his Twitter account, it is to be hoped that someone will take responsibility for these errors and for the lack of foresight in the face of the arrival of an extreme storm, despite the fact that it was impossible to know with complete certainty the extent of what was to come. We will have to trust that there is no one who considers that this assumption of political responsibilities is a lack of respect for the victims.
#unleashes #storm #Congress
