Illa opens the door to considering the Generalitat as a private prosecutor in the Koldo case.
Two weeks after Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez appeared in Congress regarding the imprisonment of Santos Cerdán, yesterday it was the President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), Salvador Illa, who submitted himself to the arbitrary and scrutiny of the groups in Parliament on this matter. This session was proposed by Junts, endorsed by all parties, and in which the PP and Vox were more accusatory than the post-Convergent parties. Not surprisingly, these two groups had also tried to provoke this session, although unsuccessfully in their case.
In this context, the president opened the door to examining JxCat's request that the Generalitat (Catalan Government) file a "private prosecution" for the alleged commissions collected from the works to bury the Sant Feliu de Llobregat train tracks, which Adif awarded to Acciona.
PP and Vox harass the head of the Executive in a plenary session requested by Junts to account for PSOE corruption.In any case, Illa sought to clearly disassociate both his government and his party, the PSC, from the Koldo plot and questioned whether it was his responsibility to provide explanations. "In the [UCO] report, there is no connection or evidence linking these people [Santos Cerdán, Koldo García, and José Luis Ábalos] with the Catalan government or the PSC," argued the socialist leader, who asserted that neither he nor anyone close to him had any knowledge of the alleged plot.
In any case, beyond defending himself, Illa wanted to put on the table two measures that he had already included in his portfolio: the law being promoted by the Catalan government to professionalize the directorates-general of the Catalan administration and another to protect whistleblowers against corruption, a measure that already has the support of the two groups that facilitated the investiture of the leader of the Catalan Socialists, Esquerra and Comuns.
Read also Illa disassociates the Catalan government and the PSC from the Koldo plot and is open to the possibility of the Generalitat acting as a private prosecutor. Iñaki Pardo Torregrosa, Pedro Ruiz
Likewise, the head of the Executive advocated for pursuing this case to the end, "whoever falls," and promised to be decisive if anyone in his political circle, within the party or the administration, ends up being charged. "Let it be carried to the end and let all those responsible be investigated. I say this with respect for the right to defense and the presumption of innocence," the president stated, while urging that a shadow of suspicion not be cast over all public servants. He added, as the only safeguard, a clause: "An error is not the same as a crime, and a mistake is not the same as corruption."
Be that as it may, the more or less widespread admonition against engaging in exchanges based on the "you too" principle was of little use. In the end, this dynamic crept into almost every parliament in one way or another, some more obviously than others.
Before the president spoke, the leader of the JxCat group, Albert Batet, reproached him for not having asked to speak himself and urged those present not to "Spanishize" the debate. The party anticipated that it would be "responsible" and emphasized that it was appropriate to address the issue due to the Catalan ramifications of the plot. "We will not tell him you have a problem and the problem is called Xi Li," Batet concluded, alluding to Pasqual Maragall's famous ruling against Artur Mas regarding the 3% tax, which was later withdrawn... and to a Chinese name associated with Illa for the purchase of face masks, which both the PP and Vox consider valid. "I don't know who he is," the president defended himself, who, in the face of attacks from those two groups over his time at the Ministry of Health, stated that all criminal, accounting, and administrative proceedings—more than 70, he pointed out—have been closed.
"He's not criminally responsible, but he is politically responsible. Let each man stand his ground; in the Koldo case, it's his man and his man," Alejandro Fernández had told Illa several times after accusing him of allowing Koldo and Ábalos into his ministry.
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