The president of the Popular Party of Lanzarote, and also president of the Parliament of the Canary Islands, Astrid Pérez, spoke this Saturday at the round table "The preservation of democratic values in parliamentary debate" held within the national event "More Spain, more Europe", organized by the Popular Party.
Astrid Pérez assured that in the last five years "Spain has been suffering a severe democratic crisis and the pillars that support our democratic system are shaking." Principles that we thought were already assumed and taken for granted, such as the division of powers, are once again becoming current and relevant, she pointed out.
The popular leader stated that, with the irruption of populist parties, which are usually anti-parliamentary, an already existing crisis with respect to parliamentarianism was further deepened, but, "it is true, -she stated-, that it is not until the last five years when all the consensuses that had been built during this democracy have been broken and what is now called the ideology of power is being implemented, a new institutionality based fundamentally on authoritarianism."
For Pérez, President Sánchez's statements when he affirmed that the legislature will be long with or without the support of the legislature, constitute "the greatest declaration of authoritarianism in the democratic era", because the absence of parliamentary debate leads us down the path of an absolutist power.
"We have normalized that legislating is validating decree laws when what there should be is a high-level debate of content." "The Parliament and the Government are differentiated constitutional bodies, but we are witnessing an excessive legislative function on the part of the executive, of the government." In addition to legislating and the function of control over the government, Astrid Pérez recalled that "it is the parliaments that represent the citizens, the space where collective decisions are debated and made in the name of the people."
"Since citizens perceive that parliaments lose relevance and stop exercising the function of counterbalance with respect to the executive power of the Government, we are promoting the disaffection of citizens with respect to the Chambers and towards the democratic system itself," she emphasized.
