The Spanish Parliament refused to invest Alberto Núñez Feijóo as president of the government

2023-09-27 23:47:45

He leader of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóofailed this Wednesday in his attempt to be sworn in as president of the government of Spain after not having obtained sufficient support from Parliament.

This announced failure now activates a two-month countdown before new legislative elections are called, if there is no new government first. A period that the president of the outgoing government, Pedro Sánchez, will take advantage of to try to gain the confidence of Parliament to be reinstated as head of the executive.

Winner of the legislative elections of July 23, which did not allow an absolute majority to be formedOn Wednesday, Feijóo obtained 178 votes against and 172 in favor, coming from the deputies of his Popular Party (PP, conservatives), the far-right Vox formation and two small parties.

To be elected in this first vote would have needed to have a majority of 176 of the 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies.

Feijóo gathered thousands of people in Madrid and promised to “fight against the blackmail” of the Catalans

The second vote will be on Friday

Feijóo, who had received the commission from King Felipe VI to try to form a government, will undergo a second vote on Friday, where more yeses than noes would be enough. Except for a major surprise, she won’t get it either.

Aware of certain defeat, Feijóo, 62, He spent much of this investiture session that began on Tuesday attacking Sánchez and to the Catalan independentists, on whom the socialist depends if he wants to be elected president again.

Ensuring to defend the “general interest” and the “equality“of the Spanish, Feijóo showed himself this Wednesday from the stands as the alternative to Sánchez, who according to him leads a “model of blackmail and concessions to those who do not believe in our country”.

“Mr. Sánchez, whether or not you are going to be president will depend on what Mr. Puigdemont wants or not”Feijóo had launched on Tuesday at his socialist rival, sitting in the chamber, in reference to the leader of the secessionist attempt in Catalonia in 2017.

Complex negotiations

With the key to governability in a very fragmented Parliament, former regional president Carles Puigdemont and the seven deputies of his party demand that an amnesty be approved for Catalan separatists with pending cases with the Spanish justice system, in exchange for their support.

One of them is his own Puigdemont, who fled to Belgium at the end of October 2017 to evade Spanish justice. “What the independence movement proposes (…) is a direct attack on the essential democratic values ​​of our country,” Feijóo denounced on Tuesday.

In addition to the frontal opposition of the right, which mobilized tens of thousands of people on Sunday in Madrid in rejection of a possible amnesty, the idea arouses growing discomfort in a part of the Socialist Party, which was also against this measure in last.

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The negotiations promise to be complex for Sánchezwho in recent years has demonstrated his great ability to survive politically and now must find a formula that satisfies the separatists without provoking a rebellion in his party.

Optimistic about his return to power, Sánchez, who already pardoned in 2021 the independentists sentenced to prison for the failed secession of 2017, has not yet spoken publicly about a possible amnesty, not even this week in Parliament, where he gave up his turn speaking to another socialist deputy to respond to Feijóo.

He did indicate, however, that It would be “coherent with the policy of normalization and stabilization of the political situation in Catalonia” which has continued since his arrival to power in 2018.

afp/ds