Alberto Núñez Feijóo will be faced with the 178 votes against him that he obtained on Wednesday, which will prevent him, once again, from being president. But the certainty of the result of today’s vote will not make the president of the PP lower his guard or be more benevolent than on Tuesday, when he presented his government program and questioned Pedro Sánchez about his willingness to give in against the independence supporters and grant an amnesty to those involved in the process.
Although this time there will be no surprise, or at least the PSOE has already said that Óscar Puente will once again be the one to intervene on the last day of Feijóo’s investiture, the popular candidate will once again question the Prime Minister about the amnesty and the self-determination referendum, to further highlight their silence, and more so after ERC and Junts, on whom it depends to be invested, have committed to Parliament that, in addition to the amnesty, not they will invest a president “who does not undertake to work to make effective the conditions to celebrate the referendum” of self-determination.
The increase in inflation by almost one point that the INE announced yesterday will be another argument for Feijóo to criticize Sánchez for not worrying about the problems of the Spaniards and thinking only of his personal interests, although for that reason must grant amnesty, which according to the PP is “the problem of a political caste, to solve the problems of a political group on which Sánchez depends”, if he wants to be president, assured yesterday the number two of the PP, Cuca Gamarra
The popular leaders have raised the tone, even more, since Tuesday, against Pedro Sánchez and the parties that, like the PNB, have refused to negotiate with them the possible investiture of their president. In addition to Gamarra, the general coordinator of the PP, Elías Bendodo, yesterday lashed out at the head of the acting Executive for being ready for “an unacceptable negotiation, an unacceptable transfer and possibly an investiture of a candidate who is ready to wear out Spain to become president of the government”.
Despite the defeat that Feijóo will suffer again, the PP is satisfied with the role played by its leader, because the Spanish are already clear that it will be “a wall of containment to what may come” and to “any unacceptable cession”.
Pedro Sánchez wants his investiture to be quick, but the PP is determined that the days until the debate is held will be long for the incumbent president, and they will constantly remind him of his possible intentions to give in to the pro-independence parties. For Bendodo, while the citizens already know that the PP “has never planned to cross these red lines of attacking the Constitution and giving an amnesty and a referendum”, the same does not happen with the PSOE. “This is the difference between one and the other, the principles”, underlined number three of the PP.
And when Feijóo has not yet received the definitive no from Congress on his investiture, the head of the PP list for Barcelona, ??Nacho Martín Blanco, unwittingly opened another debate: the possibility of the PP abstaining in a possible investiture of Sánchez. Martín Blanco told TVE, when asked about this possibility, that today’s vote is still missing and “from next week” we will talk about it, which was interpreted as the party leaving the door open to allow the investiture of the socialist leader so that he would not depend on ERC and Junts. Elías Bendodo, on Canal Sud, also said, when asked about the same scenario, that “there is still a long way to go” for this situation, and we still have to wait for today’s vote: “Let’s see what happens”. But he then clarified that “I didn’t say that”, once he was questioned if he left the door open to allow Sánchez’s investiture.
This approach forced Génova to intervene to clarify that this is not possible. “No formula in which the PP participates can go through a PP that does not preside over the government as the list with the most votes.” Sources of the popular leadership remember that Feijóo already offered a pact to the PSOE during the campaign to facilitate a government without independentists to whoever won the elections”, and they rejected it several times; in addition, the PP is convinced that the PSOE “has already chosen its partners”.
