Today's Council of Ministers will be the last one attended by Salvador Illa.
His resignation from the Health portfolio after accepting to be head of the PSC list in the next regional elections comes in the middle of the third wave and after a chaotic management marked by insolvency, negligence and opacity.
Proof of this is that, just as the political forces of the entire parliamentary arch - including Podemos - made her ugly yesterday, Illa leaves without being held accountable for her work in Congress,
as exi
ge the alarm decree.
He does so, moreover, after following Sánchez's orders to make the Ministry and his candidate status compatible in an obscene way, acting as judge and party in the legal conflict opened around the date of the Catalan elections.
Despite this, his departure provides the Executive with the umpteenth opportunity to redirect the course and focus once on management and not on electoral marketing.
Sánchez placed Illa in Health not so much to take care of the affairs of this portfolio - to a large extent, devoid of competences - but to act as a bridge with ERC, a partner in the legislature of the
Frankenstein coalition
.
The pandemic forced him to assume a decisive weight in the command bridge created as a result of the first state of alarm.
The balance could not be more disappointing and dire.
He ignored the coronavirus alerts released by national security and international organizations.
He denied the risk of the pandemic.
It failed miserably in its attempt to concentrate the purchase of material and supplies in full confinement.
He was unable to reach agreements with the opposition.
He designed a de-escalation in spring without consensus with the autonomous communities.
He was untruthful about the composition of a scientific committee that, finally, was revealed to be non-existent.
He used the onslaught of the second wave to do partisan politics on account of seeking the clash with the Community of Madrid.
He promoted a state of alarm until May, following Sánchez's instructions, to prevent him from being held accountable in parliament.
And as the experts consulted today point out in EL MUNDO, he has exhibited at all times an arrogance and sectarianism inappropriate for a Minister of Health who is not even a professional in the field.
The contagion curve, added to the numbers of infected toilets and the excess of deaths caused by the Covid, X-ray the Illa fiasco.
In any case, regardless of who his replacement is, little or nothing will change as long as the Government does not assume the need to focus its task not on tacticism but on the management of both the pandemic and the economic crisis.
Sánchez's leadership deficit joins the deep open division within the Executive, as shown by the confrontations between Robles and Marlaska or between Iglesias and Escrivá.
An immediate correction of the course in Moncloa is urgent to restore confidence, stop the third wave of the coronavirus and help the productive fabric in full chain of restrictions.
Spain needs a government that governs, not that pretends that it does.
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