The Minister of Health of Murcia, Manuel Villegas (PP), presented his resignation this Wednesday after having joined the list against the coronavirus in the last few hours despite not belonging to the first vaccination group. In total, there are at least eight mayors -five from the PSOE, one from the PP, another from JxCat and another from the CDEI- and four councilors -two from the PP, one from the PSOE and another from JxCat- who have already been vaccinated even if they are not risk groups.
It has been the president of the Region of Murcia, the ‘popular’ Fernando López Miras, who has confirmed that Villegas has submitted his resignation after hearing the news of his vaccination. In an institutional statement, López Miras has defended that Villegas “has been exemplary and his performance has been impeccable.” “No one hides that we are living through the hardest days of the pandemic,” stressed the leader of the PP, who regretted having to announce the resignation of “a good person and a good friend.”
Villegas’s resignation has come hours after an appearance in which he refused to resign, assuring that the decision to vaccinate him was adopted, as he said, following “the national protocol.” Villegas has defended himself alleging that “they have not caught me in anything. We did something according to what we thought it was written and we have acted with respect to that”, he has justified himself, although he has also apologized.
The ‘popular’ counselor has insisted that the decision was made with the conviction “that the national protocol was complied with and carried out by the intention of protecting without distinction all personnel assigned to the health services of the regional administration.”
Villegas explained that among the vaccinated workers, “members of the management team who, apart from being health personnel and having requested it, have been working since the beginning of last year in the daily management of the pandemic” have also done so. “In total, around 400 professionals from the Ministry of Health have been vaccinated,” he confirmed. Among those 400 people is Villegas’s wife.
Villegas: “In total, around 400 professionals from the Ministry of Health have been vaccinated”
“We have tried to do things as well as possible, in accordance with what the Ministry has established, and we have given the entire Ministry of Health the opportunity to be vaccinated because we believe that everyone is necessary and essential,” he insisted, and defended that “nothing more than that” has been done and that action has been taken “from transparency”.
The Ministry of Health established that the first to receive the vaccines against covid-19 would be the residents of the centers for the elderly and health and social health personnel. with the first doses of the Pfizer vaccine, and in recent days the Moderna vaccine has also been incorporated. However, many of these public officials have taken advantage of the fact that, as many of them justify, “there were some doses left over” and that is why they were vaccinated with them.
political turmoil
In the hours prior to Villegas’s resignation, the PP’s national leadership referred to his initial explanations, while Ana Martínez Vidal, the coordinator of Ciudadanos in Murcia, a party with which the PP supports the regional government, already demanded the director’s resignation.
At the national level, the president of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, demanded that López Miras dismiss Villegas for “skipping the queue” to get the coronavirus vaccine, since this behavior is “outrageous”, in her opinion, and should have consequences .
From Vox, the other party that holds the Murcian government in the regional parliament, the “immediate” resignation of the Health Minister of Murcia was also requested for having “skipped the protocol” of vaccination against covid-19, at the same time that he has described as “shameful” the “backing” he has from the PP and has called for an investigation in the regional chamber.
Criticism also came from the opposition parties in Murcia, PSOE and United We Can, and even from the central government. On the part of the Socialists, the Minister of Transport, José Luis Ábalos, pointed out that “it is not right” that some public officials have been vaccinated without being part of the priority groups, although he has indicated that the case of the Murcian councilor is “especially serious”. “Since I have received the vaccine, I am keeping one for myself and for those who are interested,” Ábalos criticized.
For his part, the second vice president and minister of Social Rights and the 2030 Agenda, Pablo Iglesias, called for the “immediate” resignation of mayors, councilors and regional councilors who have had the “shamelessness to skip the queue” for vaccination and get ahead of dependent people. Iglesias described this attitude as “ethically and morally unacceptable”, for which he calls for his resignation “regardless of the party they are in”.
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