José Luis Ábalos, former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, a lifelong party man, chose the slowest and most painful way to break with his formation and challenge his leader, Pedro Sánchez, and his entire team: he extended the deadline that They had been given 24 hours to leave their minutes, he kept the socialists and all the media in suspense until the last moment and, finally, he announced this Tuesday that he is keeping his seat and going to the Mixed Group. It was in an appearance full of criticism of the leadership to which he belonged until 2021 that he ended in tears, aware of what would happen immediately afterwards: the PSOE initiated a disciplinary file to expel him from the party and provisionally suspended him from militancy.
Ábalos defends that he has made this drastic decision, especially serious for someone who has been Secretary of the Organization and has always supported the need to comply with the decisions of the bodies, because handing over the minutes would be like admitting guilt in a corruption scandal in which is not involved. However, the PSOE did not ask him to leave the seat because of his direct involvement, but because of the political responsibility of having promoted Koldo García, the main accused in the scandal, to the Ministry of Public Works. “I do not plan to end my career as a corrupt person when I am innocent. If he resigned it would be interpreted as a sign of guilt. I’m old enough now, and I know what a political stinker is. Furthermore, that would not prevent other people from continuing to hunt,” the former minister summarized.
The attacks on the leadership of the party were constant. As soon as he began, he said: “I would like to appear supported by the leadership of my party, which would have been the right thing to do and would have satisfied my party members more.” The former minister went so far as to say that the militancy supports his position more than the leadership. Ábalos fell from grace in 2021, when Sánchez removed him from the Government, but then he was rescued last year so that he could enter the list for Valencia and thanks to that decision he continued as a deputy. However, the former minister, a man of the party, always claimed that the management’s decisions had to be respected even if they were not shared. In 2016, after the dismissal of Pedro Sánchez as general secretary because he refused to abstain from Mariano Rajoy’s investiture, the now president announced that he was leaving his seat so as not to disobey an order from the management, which required him to abstain. Ábalos, who supported Sánchez and would later go with him in the following primaries, decided to stay in the seat and abstain although he did not agree, because it was what the party bodies had decided. However, when the executive’s decision has directly affected him, he has chosen to disobey it and thus pave the way for his expulsion.
The former minister insisted this Tuesday that he does it for political reasons, to defend himself, and not economic ones, to keep his salary. But the latter are the ones that spread the most in the PSOE to explain why someone who has become organizational secretary ends up moving to the Mixed Group just to keep the record against his party. Ábalos stressed that he would earn more money if he left Congress: “Do they say that I have a complex personal situation? As complex as that of any citizen. Do you think it is economic circumstances that lead me to do this? “It would have been better for me to leave the seat, that is not the problem.”
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Ábalos’s decision, announced in the Congress press room on the verge of the beginning of the Plenary Session, represents a challenge to his party, which on Monday gave him 24 hours to resign as a parliamentarian to assume political responsibility for the scandal of the so-called Koldo case. Ábalos feels alone and abandoned by everyone, including his party, which he placed as an adversary: “I face all the political power, from one side and the other, and I am alone.”
The deputy directed harsh reproaches to the Government and the socialist leadership. And he defended his innocence and his ignorance of the goings-on of his former advisor Koldo García, who allegedly took hundreds of thousands of euros in illegal commissions in a contract to buy masks in the middle of the pandemic. “I am not accused of anything. I am not part of the ongoing investigation, nor do I have any illicit enrichment. “I have no need to invoke the principle of presumption of innocence, which does not affect me, because I am not accused of anything,” he proclaimed..
Ábalos kept the meaning of his decision unknown until minutes before the plenary session of Congress began. The departure of the Socialist Group comes after several days of pressure for him to leave the seat. Shortly before the former minister announced his decision, the current secretary of the Socialist Organization, Santos Cerdán, asked to wait (“let’s see the statement first,” he said in the halls of Congress) and Patxi López himself, socialist spokesperson, demanded patience. until listening to his until now companion in the ranks.
The former minister maintained the need to maintain his seat in Congress to defend his “honorability before public opinion and before the militancy of the PSOE”, to which he has “dedicated his entire life.” Ábalos showed his pain for not having been “supported” by the leadership of his party, whom he reproached for not having wanted to reach “the best shared solution.” “I would have liked to have the benefit of camaraderie. “It has not been possible,” he said after communicating what he has described as “the most important decision” of his political life.
The reason for keeping the seat, he said, is that he has nothing to hide and because he is not accused or cited in the case. “I do not appear in the complaint, where there are seven accused, nor in the judicial order. Until now I have not been required for anything,” he stressed, before highlighting that the contracts were audited by the Court of Accounts and that the Prosecutor’s complaint indicates that the procedure was correct according to the regulations of the time.
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The politician insisted that resigning as a deputy would have been an admission of some guilt. “I have decided to listen to the people who appreciate me, those who have conveyed to me the request that I continue in the fight, that I not give up, that I defend myself and defend my honorability.” Before saying goodbye to him, Ábalos made this reflection with a sad voice, directed in part at his party: “Those who demand my expulsion from politics appeal to a supposed ethics. But they don’t explain to me what the reparation for my civil cancellation would be or when, who would repair that? The former minister ended with sobs when summoning his colleagues from the Socialist Group, but immediately went to the general registry to formalize his transfer to the Mixed Group. The plenary session was already beginning, but Ábalos decided not to attend it and looked for the exit to the parking lot to leave Congress. From now on, perhaps as early as Wednesday in the control session, he will have to sit in the Mixed Group, where the four Podemos deputies are also present, including Ione Belarra, with whom he shared the Government until 2021.
Pressure from the Government and the PSOE
The pressure from the Government and the PSOE on Ábalos to resign the seat has been maximum and growing in recent days, while the PP was arming itself with this case to hit Sánchez on the corruption side. The socialist Federal Executive Commission had unanimously decided on Monday to ask the leader to renounce his status as a parliamentarian, after the former minister had resisted doing so himself after several conversations held over the weekend with him and several very direct in the media, first from María Jesús Montero and then from Pedro Sánchez himself.
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Consult here the resolution of the PSOE in which it provisionally suspends José Luis Ábalos’s militancy in the party.
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