This Friday, the PP, with its absolute majority, prevailed against the proposal made by Más Madrid to dedicate a plenary session exclusively to nursing homes. The decision is in line with the veto of a study commission on the same issue in the last legislative period, when the Conservatives also refused to reopen the parliamentary inquiry into the deaths of elderly people in these facilities, launched between 2020 and 2021, shows to what extent this issue is stifled the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso? For there is no greater controversy associated with the years of the Baroness's reign than the deaths of thousands of residents who were unable to access hospitals due to the triage protocols developed by the government.
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“We will not play the game of the left and revisionism and cast a shadow of doubt about the dormitories and the well-functioning resources,” Carlos Díaz-Pache, the PP parliamentary spokesman, tried to justify. “We will not take part in alleviating the pain of the pandemic again, in spreading it further, and with this pain the Madrid Left is trying to do politics.”
The veto against the transfer of older people to hospitals was strongest between March 9 and April 5, 2020 and was particularly pronounced between March 16 and 29. As hospitals freed up beds, geriatricians no longer acted as a filter and sick residents were readmitted, although the situation varied from hospital to hospital. According to an analysis published by EL PAÍS, in the entire first wave (from March to June 2020), 11,389 elderly people living in nursing homes died, of whom 8,338 (73%) were not transferred to hospital.
These terrible figures take on new meaning on Monday when Carmen Miquel Acosta, a specialist from Amnesty International, intervenes in the assembly and transforms them into consequences of political decisions: the pre-pandemic cuts that have left public health in its bones and shivering with cold let. ; the protocols that decided on the transfers; the geriatricians, he says, who acted as “gatekeepers at the hospital.”
And it says: “We document human rights violations.” […] The alleged medicalization of the residential homes never materialized, leaving the elderly in a very delicate situation and left to their fate. In our research we have also documented poor palliative care. In addition, a de facto imprisonment, hardly any information to the families, communication difficulties and only death.”
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These words echo like thunder in the assembly, where the opposition is unwilling to let the deaths of thousands of residents be forgotten. This is even less true since Díaz Ayuso intervened in the struggle during these two weeks, initially justifying the transfer of elderly people to hospitals on the grounds that “they are not safe anywhere”; and then he complained that “they are about to accuse us of genocide.” Two sentences that show that this is also not a closed wound in the government that is constantly festering through them, despite Díaz Ayuso and his Consultants are aware that this is their weak flank, the great obliteration of their management, the tragic flaw that does not go away and always accompany him, no matter how terrible the circumstances of those days of 2020, with hospitals on the verge of collapse , health workers without protection options and the number of infected people multiplying every minute. .
“They don't want Parliament to talk about a model with cracks that endangers the lives of older people in the Community of Madrid,” complained Manuela Bergerot from Más Madrid. “They have already overthrown the investigative commission with the help of Vox, they are hiding the minutes and now they are blocking this plenary session,” he recalled. “They are on the side of obfuscation and darkness, they deny it for ideological reasons,” he added. And he has denounced: “Mrs Ayuso reacts to what happened with jokes or frivolities and the PP prevents any initiative for debates or investigations in order to protect her as politically responsible for what happened.”
“A commission of inquiry would be good, but they have already knocked it down 40 times,” agreed the leader of the PSOE, Juan Lobato, to justify his group setting up a commission of inquiry into the dormitories.
Hands stained with blood
But the residency issue isn't the only controversy of the day in the Assembly. Firstly, because the PP is demanding an appearance by government delegate Fran Martín to explain the police equipment that accompanied the semi-trailers this week and which the Conservatives consider excessively harsh.
And secondly, because the representatives of Más Madrid came to the meeting of parliamentary speakers indignant because a PP deputy, Elisa Vigil, described it as “organized crime” in the plenary session the day before and later defended the origin of the expression, arguing that Carla Antonelli, MP from this left-wing party, accused the conservatives of having “blood on their hands” for reforming the region’s LGTBI laws.
Bergerot complains about the “partiality” of the President of the Chamber, Enrique Ossorio, in organizing the debates, which, in his opinion, always favor his party, the PP. For his part, the former regional vice president warns that the rules should be applied more strictly to ensure that groups maintain decorum, listen to each other and do not interrupt each other with insults and unacceptable statements.
But it is not the first time the Speakers have faced this problem, nor have they been reprimanded for having so many fluent MPs. And nothing has ever changed. It is therefore foreseeable that the Madrid meeting will continue as it is: full of shouts, screams and inappropriate facial expressions that extinguish any argument.
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