2023-09-27 13:21:35
This Wednesday, the absolute majority of Congress rejected the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo as President of the Government. The PP candidate appointed more than a month ago by the head of state has not added a single vote to those he already had before the king’s decision. He has also not achieved any rapprochement in the debate held yesterday and today. Feijóo has obtained 172 supports, his own plus those of Vox, Canarian Coalition and UPN. And 178 against. The result also anticipates the definitive defeat of the right-wing leader in the second vote, scheduled for Friday.
Feijóo turns his investiture into a censure of Sánchez, who disarms him by giving the reply to his most combative spokesperson
Further
The first of the two votes planned for the investitures has concluded with the expected result. In the two days that the debate has lasted, each and every one of the spokespersons has ratified the positions that had already been defined weeks ago. Even before Felipe VI began the round of consultations with the parties, but also immediately after.
During the vote, the PSOE deputy Herminio Sancho Íñiguez made a lapse. When he voted for the leader of the PP to be president of the Government, he initially said “yes” instead of “no”, which has caused a moment of confusion that has finally been rectified.
At the moment, Sancho has realized his mistake after the socialist bench said “no” between laughs and the deputy who had read his name reacted with doubt: “yes? No? Sorry?”. He has rectified and the Congress board has accepted his “no” to the investiture.
Feijóo needed an absolute majority to be sworn in as president on the first try. But his 137 deputies, Vox’s 33 and the two contributed by CC and UPN are four of the 176. A short distance, numerically, but politically insurmountable. So much so that the second vote, scheduled for next Friday, will most likely end with the same result.
Although a simple majority (more yeses than noes) would be enough for the PP leader in that second vote, Feijóo will not achieve it either and his investiture will be definitively defeated. The candidate was clear about it from the beginning. “I owe myself to those who called for ‘equality’ in Madrid,” he said in his initial intervention.
This will open Pedro Sánchez’s time. In fact, the prior confirmation that Feijóo’s investiture was, and is, impossible, pushed the PP candidate to propose his initial speech on Tuesday, and his replies, to construct himself as leader of the opposition, to further present a motion of censure against the acting president of the Government.
But the PP’s strategy collapsed when the PSOE opted for deputy Óscar Puente to launch a harsh reply and, at the same time, defend Sánchez from a ‘face to face’ for which Feijóo was prepared. The idea was to provoke a debate about the amnesty. But the ‘plot twist’ of the socialists misplaced the PP candidate, who distorted his interventions with other spokespersons with continuous references to Puente and Sánchez’s silence.
The investiture script was maintained this Wednesday, with the intervention of EH Bildu and the PNV. The two Basque groups have ratified their rejection of the investiture of a Feijóo visibly upset with the PNV, whom he has come to describe as the “clinex” of the PSOE, after trying to court its five votes for weeks. Feijóo has said he does not understand how it is possible that both parties, which compete for the vote and have elections scheduled for next year, share a strategy in Madrid
His spokesman, Aitor Esteban, had previously reiterated his ‘no’ and has cleared up Feijóo’s possible doubts, in addition to torpedoing the PP’s idea that Feijóo does not govern because he does not want to give in to the independentists. “There is a whale in the pool. Vox’s 33 votes are essential. Furthermore, those 33 votes would continue to be essential during the legislature. The whale is of a size that is impossible to hide,” Esteban said from the stands. “You have to start by discounting 33,” he concluded.
Although the debate with Esteban has been bitter, Feijóo’s confrontation with EH Bildu spokesperson, Mertxe Aizpurua, has been tougher. In it, the leader of the PP has once again confirmed his alliance with Vox and defended his pacts with the extreme right. “Bildu is the only party in Spain that should have a cordon sanitaire,” he said. “I respect the PNV, not Bildu,” he added.
The candidate closed his intervention in the debate in Congress with a brief speech in which he reaffirmed his party’s alliance with the extreme right. Feijóo thanked “the members of Vox” and “Mr. Abascal” for the “announced favorable vote” to make him president of the Government. A support, Feijóo said, that shows “that agreements can be reached between different parties without giving up electoral programs.” “We will continue to be different parties. It shows that in Spain there is an alternative project, which is built on what unites us instead of cementing what separates us,” he concluded.
He has also taken the opportunity to attack again the acting president, Pedro Sánchez, for not defending the position of the PSOE yesterday and delegating to the deputy Óscar Puente. “He preferred to escape so as not to tell the truth,” he said. “The truth about his negotiations, the demands to which he is subject, his position in the amnesty, the independence movement and the ideological financing of all this.”
“He who remains silent, grants,” he stated. “We will see the intensity of their silence, what they grant and what they demand. He did not want to go out on the stand because he could not defend yesterday what he defended two months ago in front of all the Spaniards,” he added. And he concluded: “My proposal is still valid, also to correct the negative effects. It will continue to be in force for the Spanish, I am only indebted to them.”
The second vote will be held on Friday, and Pedro Sánchez’s time will open. But Feijóo has already begun to oppose the acting president.
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