When you’re a hammer, everything in front of you looks like nails. This has been the behavior of Isabel Diaz Ayuso since she became president of the government of Madrid. He sees nails everywhere, mainly communist nails. Criticism of the opposition? A hammer blow to complaints of underfunding in public health? A hammer blow in media articles with problems caused by his management? Double hammer.
The thing is, not all nails are created equal in politics. It is very big and it is made of rubber. That is, it is possible that the harder you hit them, the more damage they will do when the hammer ricochets and hits them in the face. For this reason, the President of Madrid must be very careful with the criticism of health personnel. But of course if he did, he wouldn’t be Dias Ayuso.
The medical profession has high acceptance rates almost everywhere in the world. In the United States, nurses have been ranked the profession with the highest levels of ethics and integrity by Gallup for the past twenty years, with an 81% approval rating last year. Doctors lag behind by 64%. Lobbyists, car dealers and congressmen are in line.
The 2021 Ipsos Global Survey also ranks doctors at the highest level, with 54% saying it is the profession they trust the most. Second, scientists. Finally, the politicians. The Spanish are even more enthusiastic: 68% fully support it, although here the scientists have another three points.
These numbers have consolidated or improved since the pandemic. For this reason, we have to ask whether the conspiratorial view of history that Ayuso applies to almost everything will benefit him, if he will use it to settle scores with doctors and nurses. Aiming the hammer with a telescopic sight is a mistake that a smart politician will not make.
The PP’s hard-core voters in Madrid will cheer him on even if he devotes himself to ratting out old men on crutches. But the election will not be won with them alone. In some situations it is better to hide the hammer and be less aggressive. It’s not clear that Ayuso knows how to do that.
The crisis in primary care and emergency situations forced the Ministry of Health to decide to restore hospital emergencies in a way that was really detrimental to its staff and without people to cover all positions. Imagine that you receive a message from work at night, telling you that your schedule for tomorrow has changed, that your work center will be different and the new one is located tens of kilometers away.
This is exactly what happened a few weeks ago, with many leaving these new positions due to the apparent impossibility of changing their entire lives in such a short period of time.
The Ayuso government’s response was to send files to the labor inspectorate justifying this dismissal of professionals. A veiled accusation that they were involved in fraud. “If the normal, normal casualty rate is 10%, and now it’s 60%, and they’re responding in a very short time, we can all appreciate what we’re talking about.” It doesn’t need to be said. “- said government spokesman Enrique Osorio.
Osorio did not say that the Ministry of Health sent the prescription changes “with a very short response time”.
Ayuso has not stopped disdaining the health workers’ protests by defining them as “political” or “electoral”. He did it again this Thursday. “It’s not about health. It’s about polls and that the elections are a few months away,” he said at the control session of the Madrid Assembly.
To deny this, the College of Doctors of Madrid, the medical union of Amyts, which launched an indefinite strike, and other associations in the sector published a statement the same day criticizing the changes imposed and demanding negotiations to reopen those emergency situations. It must be done consensually, as the centers are opened without the necessary staff and “minimum essential materials”.
In addition, they condemn the government’s statements condemning the alleged boycott of professionals because they have been able to promote a “climate of hostility towards doctors”. If the health care system is not working well, those who face the patients are logically members of the health care staff.
During Thursday’s plenary session, Monica Garcia, from Madrid, compared Dias Ayuso’s messages to reality. “What it says: ‘There is a shortage of doctors in Spain’. What it does: Put 6,000 toilets on the street in March. What it says: ‘We put all the means at our disposal’. What it does: Replace doctors with tablets.
For Ayuso, everything is a conspiracy against him. “34 Doctors Allow for Strikes, Boycotts and Demonstrations? Aren’t We Already for War?” he said in his unmistakable style inspired by a squid that shoots a jet of ink when it senses danger. War in Iraq? Yes, there are wounds that have never stopped bleeding.
Kalmar did overtime in November. Ayuso doesn’t even defend well, but he knows how to attack. There is no plan B other than going back to plan A. That is why he blamed the problems of the health system of Madrid – which he is responsible for managing – on the government of Pedro Sánchez, or on the opposition in the Madrid Assembly, especially Monica García. Which, of course, is not managed by any regional public body.
Everyone’s guilty but him, says the squid perched on his shoulder as he’s handed the microphone.
Talking about management is sometimes a bit forced for Ayuso. He’d better find a catchphrase to piss off the left and convince voters that there’s no one better than him to do it. That’s how it justifies half of the salary.
On Thursday, he had a chance to drop a big fat one linking the climate emergency to communism. If he had said this at the climate summit in Egypt, they would have called security to remove this impostor impersonating the government.
They do not know the politics of Madrid.
Source: El Diario
