2023-09-25 22:17:36
A decisive week begins for the road to Moncloa. After the general elections on July 23, the leader of the Popular Party (PP) faces an investiture debate this Tuesday and Wednesday, which will be extended in three sessions until the second – and last – vote, which will take place on Friday. The investiture session has a specific procedure.
Candidate intervention, without time limit
The debate will begin at 12:00 on Tuesday with the speech of the investiture candidate and president of the PP, who will have unlimited time in his interventions.
One of the secretaries of the Board will begin the session by reading the candidate’s proposal, in this case Feijóo, after being appointed by the King. After the candidate’s intervention there is no response time, but when the speech ends, the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, will suspend the session.
During his speech, Feijóo will include the “concrete commitment” to reform article 49 of the Constitution to end the term “disabled.” According to the leader of the PP, “it will be a speech with economic, social and institutional proposals. It will, therefore, be the speech of those who think about how to serve 48 million Spaniards versus those who think only about how to serve a few hundred Spaniards who decide the direction of the vote for a few seats,” he proclaimed.
In the afternoon and once the session resumes, it will be the groups’ turn to respond. They will speak for a time of 30 minutes and it will be from highest to lowest representation. In this way, the first to oppose Feijóo’s program will be the PSOE. Predictably, it will be the acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who will begin the speech, although Ferraz does not rule out that the spokesperson for the socialist group in the Congress of Deputies, Patxi López, will later take the lectern.
The order of intervention will be PSOE, Vox, Sumar, Grupo Republicano, Junts, EH Bildu, PNV and PP. The groups will be the ones to designate the representative who takes part in the phase, without necessarily having to be the leader of each party. The acting President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, may intervene during the session when he considers it.
The first vote, on Wednesday
After the groups’ interventions, comes the first vote, which will begin with the session at 9:00 a.m. The debate that day will begin with the speeches of the groups that have not spoken during the previous day. Then the first vote will take place. In the process, Armengol will call the deputies one by one in alphabetical order based on a letter chosen at random. All of them must respond with a ‘yes’, ‘no’ or ‘abstention’. On this occasion, the deputies will be able to speak with their co-official language.
In the event that Feijóo is given the numbers, the president of Congress would inform the King and Feijóo would be named president. Feijóo has the favorable support of Vox, UPN and Canarian Coalition, which would result in 172 votes in favor. Therefore, the investiture would not go ahead and would be extended until 48 hours later, failing to obtain the necessary 176 votes in favor. On Friday the second vote would take place in which Feijóo’s candidacy would go ahead with a simple majority.
Second vote, on Friday
According to parliamentary times, the second vote will be on Friday, since it cannot take place before 48 hours have passed since the first vote. Feijóo will have 10 minutes to request the support of the Lower House, and the representatives of the parliamentary groups will have five minutes per intervention.
Once the parliamentary groups have finished, voting will take place again with the same procedure. In this case, the candidate for investiture will only need a simple majority, that is, he only needs more yeses than noes.
What will happen if he is not invested?
If Alberto Núñez Feijóo does not obtain a simple majority, the same procedure as a month ago will take place again. The King will meet again with the different parties and propose a new candidate.
The next investiture debate would be for the month of November, according to the indicated deadlines. If at that time there is no leader of the Executive, Felipe VI must dissolve the Chambers and call new elections.
One of the axes of the debate will be the amnesty
Despite it being the investiture of the Popular Party candidate, in recent days the political debate has focused on the demands of the former president of the Generalitat who fled from justice, Carles Puigdemont, to support a hypothetical investiture of Sánchez. Among his claims, the one that provokes the most debate is the amnesty for crimes related to the ‘procés’. It is expected that in Tuesday’s debate this demand from the independentists will appear at some point in the speeches.
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