2023-08-29 05:01:00
The leader of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez Feijóo, announced that he will call his rival and president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, to hold a meeting and discuss his investiture debate on September 26. The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) was willing to hold the meeting, although it made it a condition that the popular party apologize for the “insults” and what they consider “constant” disrespect during the last legislature and the electoral campaign.
round and round
“We believe that the two big parties have a responsibility that is also supplementary to that of the rest of the political formations tending to seek stability and governability in the country,” explained the spokesman for the PP electoral committee, Borja Sémper, from Madrid. With this call, Feijóo will start the round of contacts that he will maintain with all the parties with representation in Congress, except with the Basque independentistas from Bildu, who were excluded because the PP considers that they continue to think that “the killing had a political justification”.
The spokesperson for socialism, Pilar Alegría, asked the PP to rectify the “continuous” appeals to turncoats in the socialist ranks. “The PSOE deserves respect, our voters deserve respect and therefore, first of all, apologies because we have lived through a legislature where the socialist party has been delegitimized and insulted day in and day out,” said Alegría, who said that her party has always shown to be an “educated party with the capacity for dialogue and consensus”.
From the socialist ranks they indicated that Sánchez will attend the meeting with Feijóo, although at first they warned that the Executive Commission would have to be summoned to make a decision. According to PSOE sources, while Feijóo remains “entrenched on the noble floor of the Genoa headquarters”, he will send third parties to meetings with the different political groups.
“He intends that his investiture, in addition to being fake, be carried out through intermediaries,” reads a socialist writing collected by the Europa Press agency. The Socialists dismiss this attitude as a “revealing” point of the “zero capacity of the candidate Feijóo to be president of the government of Spain.”
On the other hand, Sumar, a partner in the PSOE government, accused Feijóo on Monday of not having “neither principles nor words” after opening a dialogue with Junts por Catalunya (JxC), thus demonstrating that “the only thing that matters” is “to come to power”. In statements to the media, Sumar’s spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, maintained that Feijóo is playing “the worst game” because “now it seems that he wants to talk” with the Catalan separatists after having demonized the dialogue carried out by the coalition government the last legislature “during the entire electoral campaign”.
“The only thing that interests him is to come to power at any cost,” emphasized Sumar’s spokesman, who highlighted a “great confusion” within the PP over these conversations. This attitude, for Urtasun, shows that Feijóo’s leadership within the PP is “increasingly weaker” and that it is “going out” despite his “attempts” to transfer “his problems to Spanish society” with his attempt to investment.
The numbers do not close
Feijóo was designated a candidate for the investiture last Tuesday by the King of Spain, Felipe VI, as he was the force with the most votes in the July elections. However, the leader of the PP must reach an absolute majority, 176 of the 350 deputies, to be invested in a first vote. The PP has its 137 seats plus the 33 of the far-right Vox and two of the regionalist parties, Unión del Pueblo Navarro and Coalición Canaria, which announced their support, bringing it to 172, to four of the long-awaited majority.
If the necessary votes are not obtained in that first attempt, a second vote will be held 48 hours later, in which the candidate will only require a simple majority to be appointed president. If Feijóo did not get the election by simple majority either, there may be other subsequent votes, which would open the door for the acting president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, to present himself later for the investiture.
Sánchez argues that he has more support than the conservatives since he achieved the presidency of Congress last week with the votes of socialism, the Sumar coalition and Catalan, Basque and Galician pro-independence and nationalist forces, reaching 178 seats. However, some of these formations warned that it is not guaranteed that they will maintain their support to invest Sánchez. If two months after the first vote there is no elected president of the government, new elections would be called automatically in Spain.
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