A report prepared by the Senior Attorney of the General Board of the Principality of Asturias (JGPA) determines that the minister for Planning, Housing and Citizens’ Rights, Ovidio Zapico, is, by a duty of an imperative nature with constitutional rank, required to attend parliamentary oversight.
The Legal Services’ criterion was requested after, at the plenary session this Tuesday, the minister left the session after announcing that he was suspending, without a deadline, his appearance in parliamentary control hearings until the opposition groups unblock the processing of a rule in the area of housing.
"A Government that is born in the Chamber, but that decides for itself when it responds to it, has ceased, to that extent, to be a parliamentary Government," the report prepared by the Senior Attorney recalls. Europa Press has obtained access to it, and it was analyzed in the Spokespersons’ Board at a meeting lasting nearly two hours.
The text concludes that the minister’s announcement to indefinitely interrupt his submission to the Chamber’s oversight has no support or coverage in the legal system, since appearing before Parliament constitutes a legal, constitutional and statutory duty, of an imperative and non-discretionary nature, both for the Council of Government and for each of its members, and not an option that they can decide unilaterally.
"A Minister cannot 'suspend' his relationship with the General Board in the same way that the General Board could not 'suspend' the relations that constitutionally and statutorily correspond to it with the President and the Council of Government as institutional bodies of the Autonomous Community," the document adds.
Warning to the Council of Government
In addition, the Senior Attorney stresses that Zapico’s announcement cannot be considered an "individual matter" of the minister, since, due to the solidary nature of political responsibility, it affects the Council of Government as a whole and places its president, Adrián Barbón, before the need to take a position.
"What can be affirmed is that, if the situation is not redirected, the refusal will hardly be able to continue being regarded as an individual decision and will become attributable to the Council of Government as a whole," the report concludes.