The Popular Parliamentary Group (GPP) filed a formal complaint with the Council of the Congress of Deputies, requesting protection for the “sectarian attitude” and “lack of decorum” of the first vice-president of the Chamber, Alfonso Rodriguez Gomez de Celis“when he exercises the presidency” due to the absence of Francine Armengol.
The nine-page document, which this newspaper had access to, accuses the socialist politician of stealing Miguel Telladopopular spokesperson in Congress, of his “legitimate right” to respond “with allusions” to the “unfounded” accusations of Yolanda Diazduring the debate on September 25.
For the most popular, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. “habitual attitudes of abuse of power” by Gómez de Celis, “who should lead the debates independently”.
According to the GPP, this behavior of the accused and of Armengol herself “is already the state of mind of the presidency of this legislature.” For the most popular, both act “in defiance of the rules and even good manners”.
According to the official complaint report, during the counter-response to an urgent questioning of Díaz, the vice president did not answer the 55 questions asked by Tellado, “as is her constitutional obligation”, but “he spent his time launching personal attacks and various threats” towards the PP spokesperson.
Tellado himself, signatory of the complaint, explains that “to avoid uncomfortable questions for her, she resorted to her usual demagoguery and dialectical evasion, saying she was offended by her condition as a woman.
For the PP, this attitude was already “absolutely intolerable”. But it was even more difficult for Gómez de Celis to refuse him the word to refute these “swear words”.
The most popular claim that section 71.1 of the Regulations was obligatory to apply in this case: “When […] “If allusions are made, implying a value judgment or inaccuracies, about the person or behavior of a deputy, the latter may be granted the floor for a period not exceeding three minutes.”
This is what Tellado said at the time, outraged by the macho suggestions from the vice president. “You don’t have the word“Your time is up,” replied Gómez de Celis. “The things that are said between speakers and in debates are rhetorical elements and we cannot reopen the debate, Mr. Tellado. “We continue.”
Other examples
The PP remembers previous episodes in which Gómez de Celis and Armengol acted in opposite ways, give the floor to a socialist deputyto which it had not been alluded to in terms “which justified it”. And when, moreover, she herself had not mentioned it “literally” in her application.
“His intervention became an improvised turn when […] It was not up to him to close the debatesince it is the majority group in the Chamber, the Popular Group, which has the last turn”, underlines the text.
It is “this arbitrariness and impertinence” that motivates the GPP’s complaint to Congress, for which it seeks protection. Just as another example is highlighted during the debate on July 24, when “insults to judges” that the vice-president of the Congress neither prevented nor allowed the spokesperson of the PP to spoil a turn that corresponded to him, according to another article of the Regulations.
“The partisan attitude of the socialist deputy Rodríguez Gómez de Celis in his functions as deputy of the president in the plenary debates, incapable of assuming the institutional role that corresponds to him in representing the entire Chamber, is contribute to the deterioration of the institutionaffecting the development of debates, respect for political pluralism and fundamental rights of the deputies belonging to the majority group of the Chamber, the
Popular Parliamentary Group”, concludes the letter.
The Popular Party accuses him of “abuse of position” to hinder the exercise of popular representation, “and of manifest incapacity to detach himself from his activism to offer an appearance of impartiality for a few hours while he occupies the presidential chair in the chamber. “According to the PP, Gómez de Celis has a”partisan dislike towards the members of the majority group of the House” which has reached “an unacceptable level in democracy.
For all these reasons, the text requests that Tellado’s right to speak be “restored” “respond strictly to personal allusions” made by the
Vice President Díaz “to contain an intolerable value judgment” on the spokesperson of the PP, because such a possibility was “denied by the arbitrary interpretation of the Regulations by the first vice-president of the Chamber exercising the Presidency”.
And he asks the Congressional Council to “urge the first vice president to rectify attitudes that lack the impartiality that is required of him when presiding over a plenary session.” And is ordered to “comply with the Regulations and apply it equally to all deputies and members of the Government in the Chamber, while respecting the fundamental rights enjoyed by deputies of the Popular Parliamentary Group.
