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Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska has avoided explaining the "purge" at the top of the Civil Guard, which he has referred to as a "redefinition of equipment". He preferred to throw balls away, pointing to the cuts and wrong decisions that, in his opinion, the PP adopted when he governed and has limited the dismissals and resignations to his full right to choose collaborators.

He has only been blunt, after more than five hours of debate in the Senate, assuring that neither he, "nor anyone from the Ministry of the Interior or the General Directorate of the Civil Guard has asked Colonel Pérez de los Cobos for the report on 8-M has not even been interested in its content. "

Parliamentary forces have riddled him with questions, doubts, suspicions and accusations regarding his management and the "purge" in the State Security Forces and Bodies, but the responses Marlaska has provided have been sparse and very confusing. The unexpected and surprising circumstances that have surrounded the dismissal of Colonel Pérez de los Cobos have focused a large part of the interventions.

"In this Ministry," the minister has defended himself, "there is a very clear question: the public function must be competent, impartial and neutral and not have interference from politicians." In this sense, he insisted that the changes that have been carried out are the result of his right to "free appointment, solely and exclusively".

"The equipment changes are carried out due to specific circumstances that do not have to be negative," he emphasized before denying that the Prime Minister has asked him for any cessation. "We have looked for the people we believed to be more opportune and based on merit," he limited himself to explaining.

Regarding the third section of the salary equalization of police and civil guards, another recurring issue, the minister has pointed it out to his credit despite the fact that it was an agreement signed by PP and Citizens in the 2018 Budgets , which could not be completed because, as the Cs senator has pointed out, the socialist government has not been able to approve new state accounts.

However, he has insisted that the measure was worked and adopted days before the dismissals carried out at the top of the Armed Institute. "That was worked from before and it was not a measure to buy wills," he said, decoupling both decisions.

While PP, Ciudadanos and Vox have demanded his "immediate and irrevocable resignation" for staining the name of the Civil Guard and laminating an "irreproachable public servant" for refusing to "violate an illegality", others -ERC, Bildu and JxCat- have He preferred to criticize the departure of Pérez de los Cobos for not having carried out before.

ERC and Bildu, in fact, have presented the former head of the Madrid Command as "a dark and sinister character linked to torture and other crimes." The representative of these two groups has even urged Marlaska to "clean up ultras" in the security forces to "prevent the snake of fascism from laying its eggs there."

JxCat, for its part, has congratulated itself on the dismissal of who they consider responsible for the police violence carried out in 1-O, although it has reproached the minister for having made this decision "only when he has felt that the person being attacked is the Government " He has asked the senator of this secessionist force and the representative of Bildu to stop "imputing abuse, threats and violence" to the security forces whose members, he said, "were born after 1978 and are normal people who do not change when they put on the uniform. "

Network monitoring

Yes, the minister has admitted "network monitoring", something he said, "intensifies with confinement", to control hate crimes or hoaxes that affect health, but not to restrict freedom of expression, but to "rebalance the situation".

Marlaska has praised the government pact with Unidas Podemos, which has started, he has pointed out, from the principle that security "is a public good". And it has had an impact on "selfishness and individualism" which, "under the pretext of an ideological agenda and the excuse of economic crises", has served to "dismantle public services and reduce their capacities".

He has claimed not to want to argue with any political force or with previous governments, but "to avoid repeating the same mistakes based on a certain ideological agenda."

Marlaska has indicated that among the next objectives of his Ministry is the approval of a single General State Plan for Civil Protection ; the design of a State Bicycle Strategy ; a Hate Crimes Action Plan ; the reform of the Law on Victims of Terrorism ; a new General Organic Penitentiary Law that favors the open regime and a new Citizen Security Law that repeals the so-called gag law , although the new norm, he has warned, will also have coercive elements.

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  • Citizens
  • Bildu
  • PP
  • Civil Guard
  • ERC
  • Fernando Grande-Marlaska
  • Vox
  • United We Can
  • Senate

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