Moreno tries to bury the controversy over Doñana until after 28M

The Government of Juan Manuel Moreno has slowed down the parliamentary processing of the PP and Vox bill to regularize irrigation in the surroundings of the Doñana National Park until after the municipal elections on May 28, confirm sources from the Andalusian Executive.

PP and Vox request the appearance of Teresa Ribera in Parliament for the expansion of irrigation in Doñana

Further

The controversial law has dominated the control session of the Government of Moreno this Thursday, in which the Andalusian president, far from shying away from criticism, has confronted the pressures of the left and Vox with a plea in defense of the norm and its benefits for farmers in Huelva. For the first time, the popular leader has raised in parliament the possibility of “withdrawing” the law if the central government offers “any alternative.”

Until now, Moreno had responded to the barrage of criticism by assuring that he was open to “modifying” the norm in the process of partial amendments to the text, a scenario that left-wing groups slammed the door by announcing that they will not even participate in that phase. of the processing. The Andalusian Executive is not the direct promoter of this proposed law, although for days it has assumed the role of direct interlocutor in the face of criticism from the Ministry of Ecological Transition and the European Commission, which demand the suspension of the project.

On Wednesday the regulatory term expired for the groups to present the list of social agents that must appear in Parliament to defend or question the bill. More than 50 names, including farmers, irrigators, mayors, ecologists, scientists and political authorities from all administrations have been proposed as appearing. PP and Vox agree on the summons of the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, but have avoided citing the director of the Doñana Participation Council, Miguel Delibes, who is very critical of the norm.

The contribution of the social agents to the debate on the regularization of irrigation in the North Crown of Doñana is going to be resolved in the parliamentary commission for Development, chaired by the PP. From here, the popular ones manage the times and, until after the municipal elections, they do not plan to convene the Commission Table again to address the next step in the processing of the law, namely: the approval of the list definitive list of appearing parties who will parade through Parliament to present their point of view.

In the last legislature, when the first bill of PP, Ciudadanos and Vox on irrigation in the area of ​​Doñana was processed, the procedure was also carried out urgently and, in practice, faster than now. Since the groups presented their lists of appearing parties [25 de febrero de 2022] until the commission approved the final relationship [16 de marzo] 19 days passed.

Nothing prevents, therefore, that the current president of the Development Commission, the deputy of the PP Ana Chocano, convenes the Table before 28M, respecting the 48-hour period from when it is called and the documentation is distributed to each group. But the instruction goes through slowing down the procedure and waiting for the post-election scenario to facilitate understanding between the Government and the Board. After the appearance of the social agents, the bill would have to return to the Development Commission and finally to the Plenary of the Chamber, for its approval. The PP parliamentary spokesman, Toni Martín, guarantees that the law will be in force in this period of sessions, which ends in July.

Angry debate in the House

Doñana has once again been the epicenter of the control session this Thursday, although this time Moreno has been the one who has brought up the issue before the opposition. In San Telmo they are convinced that this matter benefits the PP in electoral terms, since the hegemony of the vote in the rural interior is disputed, in direct collision with Vox, an ally in this initiative.

The far-right group, co-proponent of the law, has reached a question about the norm to the Andalusian president, to claim his “leadership” in an initiative that they registered before the PP brought an alternative text. Vox’s position is tougher than that of the popular, even in response to warnings from Brussels to impose million-dollar sanctions if the text is approved as drafted. “When it comes to defending our farmers, what Brussels and the left say worries us little,” said Vox spokesman Manuel Gavira, after demanding that Moreno “do not reverse” the law.

The Andalusian president has made ugly the “electoral whiff” of his question and has stressed that Vox is a “Eurosceptic” party and the PP is a “European” formation. Moreno has defended, once again, that the regulation of irrigation through the requalification of plots -from rainfed to irrigated cultivation- “will not be done within the National Park or in the Natural Park or in the pre-park”, but at “30 or 40 kilometers from there”.

The leader of the PSOE-A and the opposition, Juan Espadas, had a question prepared about the Junta’s emergency contracts with private health, but he has made a aside to once again question the irrigation law together with Doñana and demand its withdrawal. Moreno has responded by taking out a series of news, from a year ago, in which the PSOE defended a different position from the one it now wields: when PP, Ciudadanos and Vox brought the first bill to expand irrigation in the area around the natural reserve, the socialists abstained and opened to improve the norm in the processing via amendments. Just the opposite that he now defends.

That position was harshly questioned by the Government of Pedro Sánchez and by the federal leadership of the PSOE, forcing a recently landed Espadas in the general secretariat of the Andalusian PSOE to brandish his “political autonomy” and that of his parliamentary group. Moreno makes him ugly now that he has lost that autonomy and that he is an instrument of “sanchismo” in Andalusia.

In the Andalusian PSOE there is deep concern about the impact that this debate will have on the results of the municipal elections, not only in the province of Huelva, where the Provincial Council and 75% of its mayors are at stake, but in all the towns and agrocities linked to the countryside, where the struggle over irrigation in the midst of a drought crisis and with Doñana in the background is a factor of political destabilization that, they say, will benefit the right.