Congress forms the investigative committee on masks, which will run parallel to that of the Senate

He Congress will be this Tuesday Emergency Contracts Committee of Inquiry awarded by various administrations for the purchasing medical supplies during the pandemica body that will operate in parallel with that of next Monday has been formed in the Senate and that it is only the ‘Koldo case‘, the alleged plot to collect commissions on contracts for the sale of masks for which the former advisor to the Ministry of Development Koldo García Izaguirre was arrested.

The Congress committee was promoted by the PSOE, right after the outbreak of the case that caused the crisis transfer to the Joint Group of former Minister of Development and former Secretary of Organization of the PSOE José Luis Ábalos.

With this, the Socialists plan to investigate the contracts for anti-Covid material from the General State Administration for four months, including those in the Koldo case, but also review the procurement procedures of other government departments “to “study and evaluate possible changes in state law on public procurement to prevent irregularities from occurring in the future.”

The complete approved the establishment of this committee before Easter with the PP abstention and the vote against Vox. Next Tuesday, the presidency and the rest of the board positions (two vice-presidencies and two secretaries) will be elected during the constituent session.

PSOE and Sumar are aiming for a majority, with three seats compared to two for the PP, which is common for parliamentary committees. The Socialists are also aiming for one of their three representatives to occupy the presidency, which will require the support of the rest of the government’s parliamentary allies.

As stated in the letter from the investigative committee, the PP and PSOE will each have three members, Vox and Sumar two per head, and the other groups will have a single representative.

Once committee constituted, A period opens to approve a work plan and propose performances, which will only make progress if the PSOE receives the support of all its partners, who can act ‘secretly’ with the voice of the PP and Vox and without the acceptance of the socialists. And the objectives of the different groups intersect, because while the socialists want to investigate communities governed by the PP, the popular ones target high officials of the PSOE and Junts want to call, for example, Salvador Illa, then Minister of Health and now socialist candidate for the Generalitat.

Three other investigations in Congress

Congress has already established three other commissions of inquiry, those on which the PSOE agreed with the Junts and the ERC: one on the jihadist attacks committed in Catalonia in 2017 another for the spying on pro-independence politicians with the Pegasus program and the third about the call ‘‘Operation Catalonia’ to discredit political opponents from the Ministry of the Interior of the first government of Mariano Rajoy.

None of these committees have been able to get started, They are in the phase of agreeing on the work plan and approve the performances, but everything indicates that the parade of performances of these Catalan commissions and the new commission on contracts in the middle of the electoral cycle will coincide with Basque elections on April 21, Catalans on May 12and the European June 9.

Until this term, the parliamentary groups of Congress have always argued that it was not possible to have so many investigative committees working simultaneously, mainly because the small formations did not have enough deputies to carry out all the tasks.