The president of Unión del Pueblo Navarro (UPN), Cristina Ibarrola, has accused the head of the regional Executive, María Chivite, of "being the candidate of a party with deep suspicions of corruption and that will go down in history" for "remaining silent in the face of the behavior being investigated" by the former Organization Secretary of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán.
These statements are included in a statement released after the Regional Committee of the PSN, in which Chivite has made official that she will once again run for re-election as president of Navarra and has reiterated that she continues to "believe in the PSOE" despite Aznar's "whoever can do it, let them do it" and the "I don't know if coincidences or chance" of the judicial proceedings affecting the party.
Ibarrola reproaches the socialist leader for "playing the victim in all the cases, imputations, and investigations for corruption that plague the Socialist Party." In her opinion, "it is the same strategy that Sánchez follows, something to which he has accustomed us: to pass the buck, to shake off all suspicion by any means, to divert attention, and to assume no political responsibility."
In this regard, she maintains that "nothing justifies the possible corruption that nests in her party and corrodes all the values she claims to continue defending."
The leader of UPN also considers that "Chivite not only contributes to silencing and covering up the open cases against her party, but also intends to cover up the true situation of Navarra. She has lost all sense of reality and political decency."
Ibarrola lists that "Navarra has the worst position in citizen assessment of its healthcare; only Canarians wait longer than Navarrese for a medical appointment; there are more than 25,000 housing applicants; academic results in the PISA evaluation have fallen; we have gone from first to eighth place among communities with the lowest unemployment rate; inequality is opening ever wider social gaps; youth emancipation and workplace accident figures are the worst in Spain; the waiting list for disability assessment is also the worst in Navarra's history; crime with a very worrying increase...". Faced with this, she asks, "What is she boasting about?".
Likewise, she assures that "the moral and ethical degradation to which we are arriving impugns any political project that protagonizes such degradation."
For all these reasons, Cristina Ibarrola concludes that "Chivite will be the candidate of a party with deep suspicions of corruption and that will go down in history for having defended Cerdán, first, and then for remaining silent in the face of the investigated behavior of her mentor and supporter, indicted as the alleged leader of a scheme of alleged public works rigging and as the alleged ringleader of possible irregularities in SEPI contracts and of another scheme to destabilize judicial cases affecting the government".