Yesterday, Moncloa decided to exclude Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, from the draft Open Administration Law approved by the Council of Ministers. The rule, as explained by the Executive, will increase transparency requirements and will force the publication of institutional agendas and trips of senior officials and top public officials.
But Pedro Sánchez’s Executive will not take the step of regulating the role that the spouses of the heads of the Government should play since these are not public officials and are already subject to “public scrutiny.”
Executive sources assume that taking this step would be admitting that Gómez, one step away from the bench for five alleged crimes, would have engaged in practices, to say the least, of dubious ethics, since it will be the Justice that determines whether or not he incurred in some of the crimes for which he is being investigated.
The hard core of the Executive, to defend the right of Pedro Sánchez’s wife to use the resources of the Presidency of the Government, has launched an offensive against the predecessors of the socialist leader in the Government.
The sources consulted in Moncloa reply that the former presidents also made advisors available to their partners. These same sources, in conversation with LA RAZÓN, remember the care assistance that Mariano Rajoy’s father received.
“And it is just one example of many that we can give,” they say. The truth is that Gómez’s defense has asked Judge Juan Carlos Peinado to request from the Government the data and functions of previous advisors to the presidents’ partners.
The Executive maintains that if the person investigating the case agrees to do so, he will forward it without problem. The socialists criticize that of all the advisors who have worked in Moncloa for the family of the presidents, only the name and surname of Cristina Álvarez, also investigated by Peinado, is known.
«All the regulations (of the draft) affect public positions, all the regulations that are made affect those who hold a public position or are already a public position. The regulation of that figure is not in the plans. And I insist, all efforts to reinforce transparency affect public positions and administrative officials,” defended yesterday the Minister for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, Óscar López.
The truth is that the PSOE already refused, when it negotiated with Sumar its “action for democracy” plan, to regulate the role of the spouses of the holders of the Presidency.
The socialists completely ruled out this possibility despite the fact that some coalition partners, such as ERC, asked to regulate the activity of the direct relatives of the president of the Executive to prevent, precisely, the judges from engaging in politics.
It is worth remembering that the PNV already told Sánchez, when he appeared last year in Congress to advance the plan in question, that “there are things that should not be done” even though “the law does not prohibit them.” A political torpedo to Begoña Gómez’s line of defense built by the Moncloa team, and which is based on an alleged conspiracy of the judicial, political and media right, fed with hoaxes, to overthrow Sánchez and his wife at any price.
In truth, this regulatory framework could precisely avoid situations like the one the Sánchez-Gómez couple is experiencing. In any case, the private activity of Moncloa is not in the public domain.
And that is obvious no matter how much the Executive spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, has been insistingly repeating for months that the President of the Government’s agenda “is never secret.” While it is true that the details of the people who access the presidential palace are noted in a register, it is not freely accessible.
And if the meetings of the businessman Juan Carlos Barrabés with Begoña Gómez and with the president himself in Moncloa transcended, it is because he himself communicated it in court, in response to the questions of the person in charge of the investigation. The Government is determined to poison even more to defend Begoña Gómez. And his pulse does not tremble to point to the institution’s predecessors. The Government continues to resist.