The Minister of the Presidency and Justice, Félix Bolaños, has launched into this Saturday against Vox leader Santiago Abascal, whom he has criticized for his intention to select the audience that will attend next Monday’s recording of his visit to La Revuelta, the Spanish Television (Televisión Española) show hosted by David Broncano. "He wants to fill the room with ultras," he denounced during his remarks.
From an event of the PSOE in Leganés (Madrid), Bolaños highlighted that when the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, took part in the same program a few weeks ago, he did so with the usual audience planned by the format, without intervening in the composition of the public.
"What a brave Abascal, who wants to put the audience there himself, cowardly little far right," the minister said, contrasting the attitude of the Vox leader with that of the head of the Executive. "But weren’t we the ones who couldn’t go out on the street?", he replied ironically to Abascal.
"These are the elections of our lives"
At another point in his speech, Bolaños called for a "mass mobilization" at the polls on November 29 to prevent Spain from having "far-right ministers" again, something, he stressed, that was not happening "since the dictatorship."
"These are the elections of our lives," the minister said, who holds number three on the Congressional ticket headed by Pedro Sánchez, assuming that the PSOE will be "the most voted-for force" in the next general elections.
Along these lines, he accused those who predict that PP and Vox could together reach up to 215 seats of "inventing the polls." "More you would have wished; there aren’t that many people on the right in Spain," he said, insisting that the PSOE is "getting better every day," against a PP that, he said, is "getting worse every day" in the opinion polls.
"All the demagoguery, all the rigged algorithms, all the powers, all the money in the world are not worth it to manipulate the people who know that we are theirs, the ones who defend them, and that they don’t look out for people and never will," he added, referring to the "reactionary international," which, in his view, the PP and Vox represent in Spain.
Warning on pensions and sick leave
Bolaños also urged Socialist party members to "explain by land, sea and air" the balance sheet of the PSOE Government and to warn about the plans that, according to him, PP and Vox have in matters such as the "privatization" of the pensions system or the management of medical sick leave.
In this sense, he has given the case of Paraguay as an example, where, he recalled, Santiago Peña has just been removed as president "because he privatized the public pension system, he has bankrupted the bank that supported the private part" and today "they are at risk" those benefits, he said.
He has also warned that behind the proposal of the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for it to be the labor mutuals that take on the management of sick leave, according to the minister, there is an attempt to "cut workers' right too to get sick."