2023-08-09 01:26:01
The objective of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party is for a socialist to be the new president of the Congress of Deputies. It will not be easy for him, because in the majority of the government they have already hinted that he could fall back on another party. The PSOE does not contemplate this option and to guarantee success it has eliminated Meritxell Batet, the current president, from the pools. Formally, because the Catalan deputy had expressed her desire to leave office. Basically, two variables. First: Pedro Sánchez has always wanted to have Batet in his hard core. He even considered her name to incorporate her as first vice president on July 21, but the thing did not come to fruition because it would be as much as opening the melon of her succession in the presidency of Congress in the middle of the legislature. Second: for the Puigdemont group to vote for a Catalan president, from the PSC, the party he wants to defeat in the next regional elections, was asking a lot of the former Catalan president. Eliminating Batet is closer to support from the followers of the former president because it would not mean voting for her “intimate enemy”.
In addition, valuing Meritxell Batet would mean valuing the PSC, the party that has made Pedro Sánchez’s political victory possible. Within the PSC they invited journalists not to believe the information published in some media. Barely an hour later, socialist sources confirmed the news, indicating that the news in the PSC took them by surprise. Placing Batet in the front line, in the hard core, would be a first compensation. The second, the position that the current Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, will occupy, who could well end up as parliamentary spokesman, according to some socialist sources.
In Moncloa, an option that has gone unnoticed was highly valued. If Puigdemont and the Junts deputies vote for themselves, they risk having the majority of the left in the Congress Table. In fact, this movement left Coalición Canaria as the judge of the game and with an unpredictable vote that the Canarian deputy has been in charge of emphasizing. That we can vote for anyone is a risk that the socialists do not want to take. PSOE objective: make it easy for the independentistas.
For this reason, they have cleared up the unknown Batet, their great adversary. Within the PSOE, several names come to the fore. A good negotiator with a waist is needed because the legislature will be complex. In fact, this message makes it clear that Pedro Sánchez wants to achieve an investiture pact. Puigdemont’s requests have not materialized beyond public statements and the government agreement is far from being the electoral program, as some newspaper has confused.
Among the candidates is a former president of the Table, Patxi López. However, in the failed legislature, President López was also a failure. In these last hours, the current Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, emerges with force. He has a good relationship with the pro-independence groups and is used to behind-the-scenes negotiations as head of Relations with the Courts. If this candidacy is confirmed, the president sends a message of total remodeling of the Government, but also of Moncloa. And who knows if in the PSOE, because some authoritative voices would not disapprove of an extraordinary congress to carry out an in-depth renovation. Another of the names that appear in the pools is María Jesús Montero, so this change in the party would gain strength because the number two of the PSOE cannot be the president of Congress.
The PSOE wants to make it easy for the independentistas with this movement by Meritxell Batet, but it also does not want to hand over the presidency of Congress, as Sumar’s partners are probing. Yolanda Díaz’s party has raised its voice and proposes that the presidency fall into the hands of a party other than the PSOE: that is, Sumar or some pro-independence party. But the socialists are not willing to do so much. Right now, with the results of July 23, the majority of the Congress Table is up in the air because it could end up in the hands of the right or left bloc.
The Congress Table is a very important body because it directs the activity of the Lower House and has the capacity to speed up or slow down the processing of laws. There are nine members in the organ: Vox aspires to a chair and the pro-independence and nationalist formations are also moving to obtain one. In the last legislature, three positions were in the hands of the PSOE and three in the hands of Podemos. The block on the right only had three members (two from the PP and one from Vox).
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