Valencian socialists denounce "the institutional degradation" of the Courts and ask for measures to "end the maneuvers to silence the opposition"

ValenciaThe PSPV-PSOE has submitted a letter of complaint to the bureau of the Valencian Parliament regarding the presidency's cabinet's decision to "not inform the media about the speakers' meeting on August 13th," where, among other matters, the socialist party's requests for the President of the Generalitat, Juanfran Pérez Llorca, and the Emergency Counselor, Juan Carlos Valderrama, to explain their management of forest fires were to be addressed.

The socialist spokesperson, Jose Muñoz, has pointed out that the known facts are "of enormous gravity because they imply that the presidency of the Parliament has unilaterally decided which parliamentary activity deserves to be known by the media and which does not."

"Loss of democratic quality"

For Muñoz, this action “is not a simple communication problem”, but rather part of “a process of institutional degradation and a growing loss of democratic quality in the Courts”.

“The presidency of the Courts must guarantee the neutrality of the institution, not decide which debates are important enough for the media to report on”, he denounced.

The PSPV-PSOE calls on the board of the Courts to adopt the necessary measures to "ensure that these events do not happen again and that the institutional role of the chamber's bodies is preserved", especially in their relations with the media, which, they say, "have an essential function in conveying the activity of their representatives to the citizens".

“We are facing an institutional drift that must be stopped – Muñoz warned–. We cannot normalize the deliberate concealment of the activity of a parliamentary body, nor that the presidency decides which meetings are 'unofficial' or attempts to dissuade the media from reporting on matters of clear political significance”.

"Unique" situations in the political landscape

The socialist spokesperson recalled that this situation is added to other episodes that, in his group's opinion, "evidence the degradation of the institution, such as the expulsion from the governing body of the Courts of the main opposition party", a circumstance that "does not occur in any other Parliament in Spain", or "the insults and disqualifications to other authorities or public officials by the president of the chamber, who has desisted from playing her role as representative of the chamber and of the dignity of the office".

“The Valencian Courts cannot continue to advance down this path. We need to recover institutional respect, neutrality, and the basic rules of democratic functioning,” he demanded.

For this reason, the PSPV-PSOE demands that the board "take measures to prevent the presidency's cabinet from acting in this way again" and calls for guarantees that "all the bodies of the Courts function with transparency and that the media can freely carry out their parliamentary information work".

“The Courts represent the Valencian people and cannot be at the service of anyone's interests. They are not anyone's property,” Muñoz concluded.