What interest could the PP have in preventing socialist corruption from being punished?

One of the most striking pieces of news we have had this week in Spain came on Wednesday, December 11, from the Judiciary.

After offering six state pacts to Pedro Sánchez, Feijóo now says that he has never trusted him
A socialist senator, on the programs of the PP and the PSOE: “I believe that 80% coincide”

The Supreme Court unifies the popular accusations and subordinates them to the PP

That day, the Supreme Court unified the representation of the seven popular accusations brought in the case for alleged irregular procurement of masks and medical supplies during the pandemic, in which former socialist minister José Luis Ábalos is charged. In this way, the accusations of Vox, Manos Limpias, Asociación Liberum, HazteOir.org, Asociación de Abogados Demócratas por Europa and Iustitia Europa are subordinated to the accusation of the Popular Party. This decision has been criticised by the other prosecutors, who were not even allowed to attend Ábalos' statement.

"This cannot be just a desk job and Sanchez can get away with it"

This Thursday, Javier María Pérez Roldán, a lawyer for HazteOir.org, denounced that "it is the beginning of the end of popular accusations" and added: "What the Government intends is to limit the access of popular accusations to these procedures." Without popular accusations, many corruption cases would depend only on the Prosecutor's Office, which in Spain has a scandalous dependence on the government.

From Vox, the national legal coordinator of this party, Marta Castro, has agreed with Pérez Roldán's prediction, adding: "Vox is a popular accusation in all the cases of corruption that affect Pedro Sánchez, his government and prominent members of the PSOE". From her Twitter account, Castro has also pointed out: "This cannot be left as an office arrangement and let Sanchez get away with it".

The PP prevents Vox from calling Pedro Sánchez to testify in Congress

In relation to this matter, what interest could the PP have in preventing socialist corruption from being punished? I am not a fortune teller and I do not know the intentions of that party, but there are facts that should cause us concern in view of the role that the PP may have in the conclusion of these judicial proceedings.

This week, the PP hindered Vox from calling Pedro Sánchez to testify in the commission on his wife, Begoña Gómez, in the Congress of Deputies. If the PP rules out calling Sánchez to a mere parliamentary commission, what encourages us to assume that the PP would ask for his indictment, when the time comes, in a judicial procedure?

Feijóo's lack of interest in "discrediting an entire party like the PSOE"

In August 2022, speaking about the corruption trial against José Antonio Griñán, former president of the PSOE, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, made some statements that provoked many comments:

"I have no interest in seeing a PSOE president, former minister and former president of the Andalusian Government, in prison. I have no personal interest, on the contrary, nor any political interest."

Unas semana antes, sobre las causas judiciales contra la corrupción del PSOE, Feijóo había declarado:

"I am not going to use the fact that there are specific people within the PSOE who have not been up to the task and have been convicted, disqualified and sentenced to prison. I am not going to use it in any way to discredit an entire party like the PSOE."

The dreamed return of the two-party system clashes with corruption trials

In July of this year it became clear that Feijóo's strategy is to return to the so-called bipartisanship, that is, to a political scenario in which the PP and the PSOE took turns in power, without depending on other parliamentary partners such as Vox or Podemos.

To revive this scenario, the PP and the PSOE would have to protect each other from the scandals that affect them, beyond mere accusations that are limited to the level of rhetoric. Therefore, in the aforementioned case of the masks, in order to recover the two-party system, the PP would have to ensure that the judicial process affected the PSOE as little as possible and was limited to Ábalos and some other socialist officials who had already been expelled.

PP and PSOE are allies in the EU, and Feijóo wanted to extend that alliance to Spain

Let us bear in mind that the PP and the PSOE, although they adopt the role of political rivals in Spain, are coalition partners in the European Union, where they have been sharing the community institutions for many years. The growth of an alternative right in several European countries, at the expense of the centrist parties associated with the European People's Party, is an incentive for the PP to break all ties with Vox and work for the return of the two-party system.

That would explain, for example, the pact between PP and PSOE to regularize hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, a decision that builds bridges between both parties but which, however, is having an effect contrary to that desired by the PP, by causing a rise of Vox in the polls, to such an extent that the PP is finding it increasingly difficult to consider a political scenario in which Vox is not the third political force and the PP needs its support to govern... unless the PP plans to offer a pact to the PSOE like in Brussels, which is what Feijóo defended before assuming the presidency of the PP.

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Photo: Partido Popular. Meeting of the President of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with the Secretary General of the Socialist Party, Pedro Sánchez, on December 21, 2023.