The Plenary of the Parliament of Andalusia will face this Thursday, July 23, the substitution in the Presidency of the Chamber. The current president, the deputy of PP-A and former Minister of Health Jesús Aguirre, will be replaced by the also popular parliamentarian Ana Mestre, who is currently serving as the first vice president of the body.
This change responds to the government pact sealed by PP-A and Vox on July 2, which allowed that same day the third investiture of Juanma Moreno as president of the Junta. This agreement stipulates that the first vice presidency of the Parliament's Table will be occupied by a representative of Vox.
The implementation of this pact requires adjusting the structure of the Table, which in the constitutive session of the XIII legislature was made up of five members of PP-A —among them Jesús Aguirre and Ana Mestre, in addition to Manuel Andrés González as third vice president, and José Ramón Carmona and Julia Ibáñez as secretaries— and two from PSOE-A, specifically Fernando López Gil as second vice president and Olga Manzano as second secretary.
At that time, since an understanding was not reached between PP-A and Vox to form the Table, both the latter group and Adelante Andalucía and Por Andalucía were left out of it. Subsequently, it was agreed to incorporate a representative from each of these groups as a member, with the right to intervene but without a vote.
In the case of Vox, the Granada deputy Beatriz Sánchez was integrated as a member, who is the parliamentarian that her group plans to propose as the new first vice president in place of Ana Mestre.
To make the change effective, Jesús Aguirre has already formalized his resignation from the position of president of the Parliament, which will be finalized in the Plenary this Thursday. In that same session, the new Presidency must be elected, a position for which the Popular Group, with 53 seats —two below the absolute majority—, has announced that it will nominate Ana Mestre.
The departure of Jesús Aguirre represents the second resignation of a president of the Andalusian Parliament since the creation of the institution. The first was that of the socialist Ángel López, in the second legislature, in 1988, when he was replaced by José Antonio Marín Rite, who repeated as president in the following term.
Appointment of the autonomous senators
The renewal of the members of the Table will open the agenda of the Plenary, which will start at 10:30 hours. Next, the report of the Permanent Deputation on the matters addressed between March 24 and June 10 —the period between the call for the regional elections and the constitutive session of the XIII legislature— will be read, and the modification of the Permanent Legislative Commissions and the distribution of competencies among them will be submitted for approval.
Then, the designation of the nine senators representing Andalusia will be addressed. Of them, four will correspond to PP-A, three to PSOE-A, and two to Vox, following the government agreement with the Popular Group, which has ceded one of the five positions that the result of the elections on May 17 granted to Vox.
At the proposal of PP-A, the former president of the party Javier Arenas —who already holds a seat in the Upper Chamber—, former parliamentarians Francisco Javier Oblaré and Virginia Pérez, and Jesús Aguirre himself, who in addition to leaving the Presidency of the Parliament will resign his seat in the regional Chamber to focus on his work in the Senate, will be appointed senators.
On the part of the Socialist Group, the candidates for senators are the current general secretary of PSOE-A, María Jesús Montero, and those who preceded her in that position, Susana Díaz and Juan Espadas, who will thus return to be senators by regional designation. Vox, for its part, has proposed journalist Álvaro Zancajo and the until now director of the Office of Maternity Care of the City Council of Seville, María Pastor.
The candidates who are not part of the Andalusian Parliament —all except Jesús Aguirre and María Jesús Montero— appeared this Wednesday before the advisory committee of Appointments, Relations with the Ombudsman of Andalusia, and Requests, which has endorsed the suitability of all of them to occupy a seat in the Senate.
Appearance regarding the fire in Los Gallardos
The plenary session will close with the intervention of the first vice president and counselor of the Presidency, Health, and Emergencies, Antonio Sanz, following the serious fire in Los Gallardos (Almería), declared two weeks ago and in which 13 people have lost their lives.
The counselor will attend the Plenary at his own request and at the instigation of the groups of PP-A, PSOE-A, and Por Andalucía. However, from the left-wing groups, it has been argued that, in their opinion, the one who should provide explanations on this matter is the president of the Junta, Juanma Moreno.