The vice president of the Federation of Associations of the Senior Bodies of the Civil Administration of the State (Fedeca), Víctor Rodríguez Prieto, has asserted that senior officials in the civil service have the obligation to safeguard the neutrality of the Administration and to "stand up" when a political decision clashes with the legal procedures or with the established technical criteria, especially when such decisions may come to affect people’s lives.
"We have to ensure that the administration is neutral regardless of who leads it and stand up when there is a political decision that is going to go against the legal procedures, the technical criteria or even, as we are seeing in these last hours, that is affecting people’s lives and in this case in a fatal way," he stated, also the State comptroller auditor, during his speech at the XXXVI Congress of State Tax Inspectors, which is being held in Toledo.
Rodríguez Prieto has argued that the technical profiles of the Administration set "a clear direction" and communicate to political leaders that, in order to put their projects into motion, they must adapt to "the established channels and procedures". In his view, it is up to these officials to serve as a guide and a professional counterweight to ensure that the initiatives are channeled in accordance with the regulations and specialized reports.
However, he has clarified that this supervisory role does not mean blocking or vetoing the policies that elected officials want to promote, since they have "the democratic legitimacy to develop their project".
"It does not mean telling them that they cannot do something, because as I said at the beginning, they have the democratic legitimacy to develop their project," he emphasized, underlining that the task of officials is to ensure respect for the law and for technique, without replacing the political will expressed at the ballot box.