It was all quite surreal, but sometimes episodes like this happen in parliaments too. Political stuff, surely. In this case, it all ended with the formal registration of an initiative by the Popular Group to hold a monographic plenary session on irony in Parliament. Yes, about irony. Now it will be up to the Bureau to qualify the proposal and, if necessary, give the green light to the 135 deputies to hold this plenary session focused on the art of political jokes.
It all started last week, during the debate on the state of the region, when the socialist spokesman, Juan Lobato, offered Isabel Díaz Ayuso a complete monograph on regional financing, to find out exactly what model the president of the Community of Madrid is using.
The PP left pending the formal response to Lobato’s proposal. But this Thursday, during the control session of the Assembly, Ayuso took advantage of the control session and his response to Lobato to return to the issue.
“Listen, he proposed a plenary session as a Treasury technician. I will propose a plenary session against censorship as a journalist, and we will talk about everything that is happening in this country, how they are attacking the press, the government will decide what is biased information, who is a good or a ‘bad journalist,'” Ayuso said.
Ayuso’s idea seemed serious, but the president’s communications department quickly left it in the realm of irony, with this headline in a press release: “Díaz Ayuso ironizes by proposing a complete censorship session to address everything that was conceived against the media, companies and judges” during the five days of love in La Moncloa.
In this way, they made it clear that the idea of the plenary session was just a figure of speech. Which was quite funny. In the control session, already in a serious tone, Ayuso stressed that “the debates on the state of the nation are not taking place, even the senior officials of the CEI do not know what they charge, but they are going to help the companies”, to the audiovisual companies, their leaders, the journalists, to intimidate them, to persecute the judges and the media, that is what they imagined during the five days of love in La Moncloa.”
Lobato remained with the idea of a complete monograph on censorship, he liked the idea and took up the challenge and a little later, in statements to the press in the halls of the assembly, he assured that his group had registered the request to hold a plenary session exclusively dedicated to freedom of the press. His idea, of course, is to place Ayuso’s chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, at the forefront of the debate.
The socialist spokesman sees no reason for Ayuso to reject the plenary session, nor the Table of the Assembly, since it was a proposal of the regional president. He had not grasped the irony, or had not wanted to grasp it.
For this reason, a few minutes later, PP spokesman Carlos Díaz-Pache told reporters that Ayuso’s proposal was pleasant, somewhat humorous, and he regretted that Lobato did not know how to differentiate between things.
Immediately after, he assured that his group had filed a request for a complete monograph on irony. Journalists, logically, no longer believed it and had to ask themselves questions. And yes, the proposal exists and is registered. It says like this:
“To the Bureau of the Assembly of Madrid: Mr. Carlos Díaz Pache, spokesperson for the Popular Parliamentary Group of the Assembly of Madrid, in accordance with the provisions of article 216 of the Rules of Procedure of the Chamber, requests the holding of a MONOGRAPHIC DEBATE in plenary session on irony in the Assembly of Madrid. The petition bears his signature.
The hot potato now falls to the Council, which will have to decide on the fate of the requested plenary sessions.
