The Parliament of Andalusia will debate next week in plenary session the emergency contracts of the Andalusian Health Service (SAS) with private clinics which are the subject of a judicial investigation for a possible offense of prevarication. The PSOE, Vox and also the PP requested the appearance of the Government Council to give explanations on the reports of the General Intervention of the Council which manually censor the extensions of these contracts from 2020 to 2024, based on the framework legal permit during the pandemic when it was already repealed.
As expected, Juan Manuel Moreno’s political rivals will also attack him on this issue during the control session, since they did not have the opportunity to do so a week ago, because the president was absent from Parliament to quickly go to Malaga and supervise the device in person against DANA. Since then, the PSOE has expanded its complaint against the Council for hand-picked contracts, and the judge indicted the last three leaders of the SAS, including the current one in office, who appeared before the court of instruction accompanied last Monday . your lawyer to find out your rights.
The Andalusian government will therefore have to report this matter to Parliament, but it will not be a complete monograph on the award of contracts by the SAS, as the three left-wing opposition parties had requested together: PSOE, Por Andalucía and Adelante. The President of the House, the popular Jesús Aguirre, blocked this initiative of three groups which, allied, remain in the minority compared to the absolute majority of 58 deputies of the PP.
Aguirre used his power – the regulations of Parliament help him – but the left reminded him that he had also “vetoed” the general debate on health for a year and a half, even before the trial of contracts burst. Neither because of the collapse of primary care, recognized by Moreno himself in Parliament, nor because of the lack of control of patient waiting lists for surgical intervention, the second highest in the country. The socialists reacted by systematically voting against the agenda of all plenary sessions.
The umpteenth rejection of the President of the House shook the spirits of the PSOE and the spokesperson for its parliamentary group, Ángeles Férriz, ended up accusing Aguirre of acting as “judge and party”, suggesting that his motivation for “opposing his veto” to this project the debate is “personnel”. That is to say, Aguirre would prevent Parliament from devoting an exclusive session to contracts managed by the SAS, because a large part of the period examined by the judge and the anti-corruption prosecution corresponds to his mandate as Minister of Health of the first Moreno Government.
“This Parliament is a battering ram of the Andalusian government, a wall, it does not function autonomously. The one who had to decide was the Minister of Health and appointed a leader of the SAS who is now accused. It was the President of Parliament who gave the instructions to this accused director,” Ferriz denounced during his appearance in the House.
Later, during the Meeting of Spokespersons, he reiterated these accusations directly to Aguirre himself. “You are judge and jury,” he said. However, the PSOE did not personally name the President of the House in its complaint. The socialists accuse, by name, the three leaders, then indicted by the judge, and immediately afterwards, they maintain that this “parallel system” of hand-picked contracts could not continue over time without the agreement and complicity of “ “the highest levels of Andalusian government”.
“It seems obvious that it is not possible to keep alive a parallel system of public procurement for two and a half years, for more than 240 million euros, without the full knowledge, consent and assent of the most high levels of the government of the Junta of Andalusia,” reads the complaint. The magistrate and the anti-corruption prosecutor’s office demanded numerous documents from the Commission and the Intervention, including the minutes of the Governing Council which approved the replacement of the prior inspection of this type of contracts with permanent financial control ( a posteriori).
Aguirre, Minister of Health in the event of a pandemic
Jesús Aguirre, professional doctor, former deputy, former senator and veteran leader of the PP of Córdoba, occupied the Health portfolio between January 2019 and July 2022, during the first legislature with a minority government of Moreno, in coalition with Ciudadanos and supported from the outside. by Vox. A year after his appointment, he had to manage the Covid-19 pandemic. He appointed Miguel Ángel Guzmán, now accused in the trial, as director of SAS, alongside his two successors, including the current director, Valle García.
Guzmán led the SAS between November 2019 and the Andalusian elections in summer 2022. During the following term, he will be promoted to Deputy Minister of Health by the new head of portfolio, Catalina García. While he was director of the SAS, in January 2021 he signed the controversial emergency file from which all contracts with private clinics now investigated by the judge emanate. A file which started with 70 million euros, but was extended four times – until June 2023 – quadrupling the initial budget with successive amendments until reaching 243 million.
Three months after being dismissed as Minister of Health, he signed for one of the private insurers (Asisa) which profited the most from the random contracts he himself signed – for more than 44 million euros -, causing a major political crisis. in Moreno’s government. The Council opened an internal investigation and concluded that his signature violated the law on the incompatibility of management positions, because the mandatory two years had not passed since his dismissal as director of the SAS and his signature in one of the private companies benefiting from its contracts. The appointment has been temporarily interrupted.
After being indicted, the Andalusian executive began to distance itself from him and his immediate successor within the SAS, Diego Vargas, to focus on the defense of the current director, categorically denying that she had prolonged the system contractual hiring which the judge is investigating in 2024. .
The whole fight has led to a heated fight within the Council of Spokespersons, where representatives from all groups come together to agree on the agenda for the next plenary session. They ended up yelling, interrupting each other, and accusing each other of “lack of shame.” Aguirre, who chairs this body, stoically endured the downpour and brilliantly dodged the political offensive of the left: “He will get involved in due time,” he responded when the PSOE, Por Andalucía and Adelante Andalucía asked him why it was necessary to demolish the complete monograph on contracts.
Vox witnessed this clash between the left and the PP from the sidelines. Santiago Abascal’s party also demanded that the Andalusian government appear and give explanations on the intervention reports that undermine the main defensive line of the SAS, that is to say two legal relationships that guarantee the continuity of contracts emergency until well into 2023. But Vox did not support the left’s initiative for Moreno himself to appear or for this matter to be resolved in plenary session and, even less, in a commission of inquiry, which is already in place. It was rejected by the majority of the PP.
The popular people justified their refusal by accusing the socialists of wanting to “confuse the political debate”. The spokesperson for his group, Toni Martín, uttered this sentence: “Let Juan Espadas tell him [líder del PSOE-A] to an Andalusian whose life was saved thanks to an emergency contract, the important thing was to save 10% on the contract. They are playing dirty politics with the lives of Andalusians, it is deplorable. “Behind all this, there are lives.”
Martín reiterated his belief that all contracts were concluded in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, at the San Telmo Palace, seat of the Council, there are already plans to present themselves as an injured party in the legal process of the contracts, which will necessarily involve accusing an official of their own government. In this sense, the firewall that the spokesperson for the Council, Carolina España, developed this Tuesday to protect the current director of SAS is significant, while maintaining a prudent distance from her predecessors, for whom she refused to put your hand on the fire.
