The president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, reiterated this Sunday, in separate interviews on ‘Galicia por diante’, on Radio Galega and on Galicia Television, that the democratic regeneration plan of the head of the executive, Pedro Sánchez, does not aim but the “censorship” of critical media and the control of the judiciary to limit the controls on the government. In his statements, collected in a PP statement, he affirmed that the socialist was engaged in a “brutal harassment” against judges and journalists.
Already on Wednesday, during the government control session in Congress, in his question to Sánchez, the opposition leader had described Sánchez’s media project as “censorship” and went so far as to say: “Nothing like this has been seen since Franco.” This Sunday, on Radio Galega and Galician Television, he made the same speech: “Censorship, control and persecution of journalists, media and judges are contrary to the rule of law and have never happened before in Spain.
“The more the PP harasses them, the more they will defend the right to information, freedom of expression and judicial independence,” promised Núñez Feijóo, after stressing that Sánchez is reacting this way because he is “politically and judicially cornered.” “The corruption program that limits the activity of the president of the government represents an unbreathable environment in Spanish politics,” he said, referring to the judicial investigation against his wife, Begoña Gómez, for alleged influence peddling against her brother and the Koldo case.
The regeneration plan approved on Tuesday by the Council of Ministers includes measures such as registering media outlets with the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) and limiting institutional advertising. The PP already sees in this a desire for “censorship” against the critical press, but the government’s partners want to go further. Podemos had then tabled two laws, one requiring media executives to declare their assets and the other against disinformation, while ERC calls for the creation of a Professional Council of Good Practices to combat “fake news”.
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On another note, regarding the Catalan quota promised to ERC in exchange for its support for the investiture of Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Núñez Feijóo has implied that Sánchez, with his bilateral meetings with the heads of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Autonomous Executives, what is being targeted is “the division” of Spanish society. It is not in vain that the government wants to sell, after having accepted a kind of Catalan economic agreement that it had always denied, which would favor a single financing for each territory. Alfonso Rueda and Juanma Moreno, respectively presidents of Galicia and Andalusia, and the first popular barons that Sánchez meets in the framework of this cycle, have already made it clear that they will not accept anything that does not go through a multilateral negotiation.
This is why Núñez Feijóo has stated that the regional presidents of his party have “much more sense of state” – focused on “general interests” and not just on their respective communities – than Sánchez himself. “We cannot distribute everyone’s money by creating a section to keep the Sánchez government and the Generalitat of Catalonia in the hands of the PSC,” said the opposition leader, who is very firm against anything related to the “independence quota.”
The PP president also criticized the lack of general state budgets – it remains to be seen whether the government will put its relations with Junts back on track in time to move them forward -, the actions of the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela, Ramón Santos, in the face of the coercion in his residence of the Venezuelan opponent Edmundo González and the absence of immigration policies to respond to crises such as that of the Canary Islands.
