Friday, February 20, 2009

I Demand An Investigation Into This Investigation!

Already buried in news terms by the huge volume of revelations of corrupt activity from "our other corruption case is a bigger one", Esperanza Aguirre is of course getting her evil way with the commission of investigation into the Madrid political spying affair. Having already announced the results of the commission before it was even formed, this is hardly surprising. Likewise, the investigation was given a date to finish before its members had been been told when they might be able to start holding hearings. Not that it matters too much, the party responsible for the spying has a majority on the commission supposedly set up to clarify it all.

Nevertheless, the proceedings provide yet another insight into how politics is conducted under the control of the Aguirre Gang. The opposition submitted a long list of requests for documentation that might quite quickly shed light on what had happened; focused on the activities of the security department which seemingly has no other reason for existing if there is no spying to be done. The PP responded by requesting documents on all spying or corruption issues anywhere in Spain which had no connection whatsoever with the Comunidad de Madrid. Expecting the opposition to vote against these requests, the PP then found themselves having to vote down their own eccentric proposals as the rest of the commission sat on their hands. At the same time they downed all requests for any relevant documents. At least the commission has finally demonstrated a useful application for Twitter, as one of the members has decided to use it keep people informed of what is going on.

Now, just to close the circle ever so neatly, the chair of the commission has resigned so that he can fight to demonstrate his innocence against the widespread suspicion that he is on the list of those who could end up accused in Baltasar Garzón's case. Confusing, I know, but both cases deal with inhabitants of the same scummy pond. Somebody commented to me tonight that there didn't seem to be much money involved in the Garzón case, but if you take just a couple of the operations involved from the relatively small town of Boadilla del Monte you are already talking about several million euros.

On the other hand I should retract what I said the other day about the scandals affecting the PP in Valencia. It turns out that the president of that region, Francisco Camps, has a character witness of such extraordinary standing and repute that no sane person would even dare to question his integrity. The man of a hundred bank accounts and legendary lottery winner, Carlos Fabra, has said he will put his hand in the fire for Camps. These are words which Mariano Rajoy has very carefully avoided using in support of those touched by the scandals, but what would he know compared to a specialist such as Carlos?

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