More Madrid and the PSOE have questioned whether the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, will put an end to the periodic meetings she had been holding with the parliamentary groups of the Assembly at the headquarters of the regional Executive. In contrast, the PP maintains that it was the opposition itself that "threw this format of meeting to the ground," which was held twice a year.
At a press conference after the Board of Spokespersons, the spokesperson for More Madrid, Manuela Bergerot, has lashed out at the head of the regional Government, whom she has accused of being "withdrawn into herself" and of being "unable to listen and attend to the problems of the citizens."
"It is evident that Ayuso is at her worst moment and evidently does not want to face anyone who does not dance to her tune," Bergerot has stated, who has joked that the president should meet with lawyers to "see how she comes out unscathed from the purchase of the penthouse and the other judicial cases that are looming over her."
For her part, the socialist spokesperson, Mar Espinar, has downplayed the significance of these meetings ceasing to take place, considering that these appointments "did not contribute anything at all" and that it is Ayuso herself who "loses the most" because it was "the only photo she had that resembled institutional and classy politics."
Espinar has detailed that she only participated in one of these meetings with the Madrid president and that, when she tried to take advantage of it to ask for explanations about issues she usually raised in the Plenary, the "only" thing she achieved was to be "thrown out of her office."
The PP blames the opposition for the wear and tear of the meetings
Asked about the elimination of these meetings, the spokesperson for the PP in the Assembly, Carlos Díaz-Pache, has defended that the decision is due to the progressive deterioration of these meetings and has directly pointed to the other parties. "It is a shame that the opposition has thrown to the ground an initiative that the president maintained for years," he has stated.
Díaz-Pache has emphasized that these appointments were held twice a year — once in September, at the beginning of the political course, and another in January, at the beginning of the year — and that they were maintained even during the absolute majority governments.
According to the 'popular' spokesperson, these meetings had ceased to fulfill the purpose for which they were initiated because "the opposition could insult the president or her government in private and then do it publicly." "When an initiative stops being useful, I understand that it needs to be replaced or reformulated," he pointed out.
He added that the original purpose was for the groups to be able to dialogue "calmly about proposals that could be useful to the people of Madrid," but he believes that if the opposition prefers "to resort to insults," the initiative "becomes useless."