2023-08-21 22:25:52
The president of the Congress of Deputies, Francina Armengol, has in her hand the decision that will activate the countdown for a hypothetical electoral advance, provided that no investiture attempt bears fruit in the coming months. If, after the round of contacts with the parties on Monday and Tuesday, the king, within his constitutional powers, decides to designate the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, or the acting president, Pedro Sánchez, as a candidate for the investiture, it will be Armengol the one that fixes the date of the debate in Congress.
Vox avoids guaranteeing its support for a hypothetical investiture of Feijóo one day after his meeting with the king
Further
In the event that this first investiture fails – a probable scenario since for the moment neither of the two applicants has managed to close the necessary support – the legal time of two months for new elections will begin to run. And, depending on the dates, there is the possibility that these new elections will be in the middle of the Christmas holidays.
If he wants to avoid it, Armengol must consider that the Constitution, in its article 99, establishes that “if after the period of two months from the first investiture vote, no candidate has obtained the confidence of Congress, the king will dissolve both Chambers and call new elections with the endorsement of the President of Congress ”. The seventh additional provision of the Organic Law of the General Electoral Regime (LOREG) It also points out that in this case included in the Constitution “the elections will have to be held on the forty-seventh day after the call”.
To prevent the new elections from being held in the middle of Christmas, the first vote on an investiture attempt should take place before September 8 or after the 21st of that month. Any vote in that period of almost three weeks would lead to an election between Christmas Eve, December 24, which also falls on a Sunday – the same as December 31, New Year’s Eve – and Three Kings Day, January 6, 2024, which It is Saturday. Thus, if this Tuesday Felipe VI designates a candidate, to avoid the Christmas dates Armengol should set the debate for the first attempt at the investiture next week or wait a month, until the week of September 25 to 30.
If the debate is held next week and the first vote takes place on Thursday the 31st–the one that requires an absolute majority, the second would be two days later, on Saturday–, in the event that within two months no candidate wins the investiture the new elections would be on Sunday, December 17. However, it is possible that, given the lack of closed support, the king will not appoint Sánchez or Feijóo as a candidate this Tuesday. Both leaders would then have to negotiate with the rest of the groups before a new round of contacts with the head of state for which current legislation does not set a specific deadline. The two-month limit would start running later, after the king chose a candidate and Armengol called a first investiture debate.
A reduced electoral process since 2016
The LOREG also establishes different deadlines than those of ordinary elections in the event that the elections have to be brought forward once two months have elapsed after the first vote of an investiture. These specificities respond to the reform of the text that was launched in 2016, when the elections had to be repeated precisely because that two-month period expired without Mariano Rajoy or Pedro Sánchez managing to be sworn in. The objective was to “reduce the duration of the electoral process”
For example, groups of voters and parties, federations or coalitions that have not obtained parliamentary representation in any of the Chambers will not need to collect again the signatures required by LOREG to present candidacies “when they have already presented them for the immediately preceding elections. to Cortes Generales and the number of valid signatures would have exceeded the required number”.
The parties and federations that establish a coalition pact to jointly participate in the elections “must notify the Central Electoral Board or the Provincial Electoral Board if the scope of the coalition is reduced to the constituency, within five days of the call” . And in the case in which it is desired to maintain in the same terms the coalition pact with which the immediately previous general elections were held, “it will suffice to expressly communicate said will by writing to the Central Electoral Board or to the Provincial Electoral Board if its scope is reduced to the circumscription”.
Candidacies must be submitted to the Provincial Electoral Board between the eighth and thirteenth day after the call. Within this same period, the representatives and promoters may express in writing addressed to the Provincial Electoral Board their willingness to maintain the candidacies presented for the immediately preceding General Court elections. “The document of maintenance of the candidacies must be accompanied by a declaration of acceptance of the maintained candidacy, as well as the supporting documents of their eligibility conditions,” explains LOREG.
In the event that new candidacies are presented or the candidacies presented for the immediately preceding General Court elections are modified in some way, the representatives must present these changes also between the eighth and the thirteenth day after the call.
The candidacies must be published the fifteenth day after the call and the Provincial Electoral Boards will make the final proclamation of candidates 20 days after the elections are called, having to be published in the BOE the next day.
Eight days of campaign instead of the two weeks
Unlike the two-week campaign of the ordinary elections, in the event of an advance due to failure of the investitures, the electoral campaign lasts eight days. In addition, the distribution of free time for electoral propaganda in each publicly-owned media outlet and in the different areas of programming that they have is reduced to half of that foreseen in elections such as those of 23J.
The electoral repetition would also cost less to the public treasury. The LOREG establishes that the amounts foreseen to subsidize the expenses that originate the electoral activities will be reduced, depending on the votes and seats obtained by each candidacy, by 30%. And the limit of electoral expenses will be reduced by 50%.
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