Deputy of Nueva Canarias (NC) in Congress Pedro Quevedo expressed satisfaction that the Lower House validated the five royal decree-laws on sanitary, social, economic and labor measures to deal with the coronavirus pandemic and the extension of the state of alarm for another 15 days with the support of NC. Quevedo rejected that the way out of the Covid19 crisis is based on ultraliberal policies, cuts in the Welfare State of 2008, which severely damaged and degraded essential public services such as health.
11 days after the government of Pedro Sánchez decreed the confinement and the first measures to face this crisis, Pedro Quevedo said that the plenary session of the Lower House showed that, apart from some «fireworks, there is a basic consensus in that partisan interests cannot be put before general ones”.
The spokesperson for the progressive nationalists expressed his satisfaction with the validation of the five royal decree laws and the extension of the state of alarm until April 11 because they are «necessary» although there are issues that remained «unresolved». Pedro Sánchez, questioned the NC deputy, left it unclear whether local corporations and autonomous communities that comply with the deficit and debt targets will be able to use all the surplus. It is «unacceptable», he denounced, that public money is immobilized in the banks.
In the same critical sense, he referred to the «unequal way» that the autonomous communities receive the necessary medical supplies, especially when there are territories such as the Canary Islands with 22% of their toilets infected. For Quevedo, the self-employed and SMEs require greater protection measures because they are the maximum generators of employment and those that, to a greater extent, suffer the economic consequences of the pandemic.
As «reasonable» he called the social policies linked to the right of people since «advance is beginning to be made», as he specified, in the initiatives aimed at defending the social majority through measures such as the payment of rents and the guarantee of temporary employment regulation files.
After assessing the predisposition shown by the economic vice president Nadia Calviño to make a greater effort than the initial mobilization of 200,000 million euros in order to increase liquidity, Pedro Quevedo expressed his concern about the open-ended debate in the plenary session of today, that is, in «how the recovery» of the State will be considered once the pandemic has been overcome.
A debate is opened, he insisted, if «the right thing» is to promote essential public services or the ultra-liberal recipes and cuts that, in 2008, made the pillars of the Welfare State totter. In Quevedo’s opinion, it has been shown that the recipes for the cuts «have been a failure» since they caused a «severe degradation» of essential public services such as health.
«Incredible» that the Spanish ultra-right, censured the nationalist congressman, opposed the repeal of objective dismissal for sick leave. A reform of the PP, he recalled, which has harmed the weakest social sectors to a greater extent.
