2023-08-10 11:09:53
The general elections of 23-J drew a Hemicycle with a configuration similar to that reproduced during the last legislatures: a highly fragmented Parliament in which no party has an absolute majority or comes close to it. Since the appointment at the polls, the PP insists that if the PSOE leader, Pedro Sánchez, reissues the coalition government and achieves the parliamentary support that has sustained him these three and a half years, the country is headed for “instability” politics and constant “ungovernability”. Regarding the balances that the coalition Executive has carried out in the last legislature to carry out the laws, EL PAÍS has analyzed all the legislative initiatives approved in the plenary session of Congress and which groups voted for or against. With a first conclusion: of the 215 laws approved, more than half obtained the support of an absolute majority in the lower house.
The detailed study of these 215 initiatives —118 laws, 96 royal decrees and one royal legislative decree—, also shows that 157 laws promoted by the Government, or by the party groups that make it up, were voted on in plenary session of Congress ( PSOE and Unidas Podemos) —the rest were voted on in commissions. And the Chamber approved 143 by an absolute majority (with 176 or more favorable votes), which represents 91% of the initiatives presented in plenary session and 66% of the 215 total. The Basque parliamentary groups emerged as the most reliable partners to carry out these laws. The PNV and EH Bildu were the parties that supported the most laws, either with a favorable vote or with one abstention. Another of the parliamentary partners of the coalition that favored the most initiatives was ERC.
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Although the Congress that resulted from the July 23 elections contains fewer parties than the previous one —it has gone from 16 to 11 formations with parliamentary representation—, the numbers do not give the possibility of governing alone not only to one party, but also through coalition. Neither the sum of PP-Vox (170 deputies) nor that of PSOE-Sumar (152 deputies) by themselves reach the 176 absolute majority. The two blocks will be forced to agree with the rest of the parties, both if they want to carry out the investiture and for the development of legislative activity during the subsequent term.
The Cortes will be constituted next Thursday, the 17th, and from that moment the next step for the political parties will be to square the numbers with an eye on the investiture. The Socialists aspire to unite, around their 121 seats, Sumar’s 31, ERC’s 7, EH Bildu’s 6, PNV’s 5 and the only one from BNG. While the PP takes for granted, in addition to its 137 deputies, the 33 of Vox, the seat of UPN and that of the Canary Coalition. It remains to be seen how negotiations continue with Junts, Puigdemont’s formation, which won 7 seats and has the balance in its hands. For now, this Wednesday the possibility of an easy and quick negotiation with the PSOE has cooled.
In the last legislature, the government’s relations with Junts were not easy. The eight deputies that Puigdemont’s party had voted against the investiture of Sánchez in January 2020, and they also did not support any of the three general budgets presented by the Government. Of the 157 laws promoted by the Executive that were voted on in plenary session of Congress, Junts supported 127, voting in favor in 72 and abstaining in 55. And the result of 23-J now places them in a key position before the investiture, which In turn, it will translate into greater room for maneuver during eventual debates and approval of laws in the Hemicycle.
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Despite the internal frictions within the coalition, and having been the executive that started with the fewest deputies (155) since the restoration of democracy, the coalition’s legislative activity is not far from what it was last time that a party governed with an absolute majority. During the 2011-2015 legislature, the popular government of Mariano Rajoy, with 186 deputies, approved a total of 253 initiatives, 38 more than the last Executive of Sánchez. Most of the laws presented by the coalition were approved with 188 favorable votes. Only one of the initiatives declined: the decree with which the Government wanted to regulate access to the remnants of the municipalities. Another complicated situation for the Executive was the agonizing approval of the labor reform in February 2022, which went ahead due to the involuntary error of the PP deputy, Alberto Casero: the norm garnered 175 votes in favor compared to 174 against.
That vote was a major setback for the PP, which took the vote to the Constitutional, and counted on a political defeat for the Government. Despite their flat rejection of the Sánchez Executive, in the last legislature the popular ones came to facilitate a total of 110 Government laws voted in plenary session of Congress. On 70 occasions, the PP parliamentary group voted in favour, and abstained on 40.
In the case of PSOE and Sumar, if the coalition government is reissued, they will face greater challenges to secure the necessary parliamentary majorities. The sum of the two left-wing parties is no longer above that of the PP and Vox as in the last legislature, so a simple abstention of the rest of the parliamentary partners will not suffice in the laws in which these formations decide to vote against. The PP has stated that it is willing to attend an investiture, as confirmed this Wednesday by the party’s general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, and that even though Feijóo cannot be invested in the second round, as is proposed on stage according to the current agreement calculator . The leader of the PP would have at most 172 votes in favor, compared to 178 negative votes, so he would not have more yes than no. But, even in the remote event that it achieved more yeses than noes thanks to the abstention of other groups, Feijóo’s hypothetical lone government would also have to face some convoluted mathematics to push through any law.
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