Elías Bendodo, Cuca Gamarra, Esteban González Pons, Borja Sémper… Yesterday the PP displayed the potential of a large part of its national spokespersons to formalize its willingness to sit down as of Monday with all the political groups with parliamentary representation in order to to obtain the necessary support for the investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with the exception of EH Bildu, whom he will prolong a veto that, on the other hand, has lifted Junts.
Once the King’s order was accepted the day before, the concatenation of messages from the general coordinator, the general secretary and the vice-secretaries of political action and open society, respectively, were dosed on radio and television to, like a Chinese drop, try to make it reach as much in the territorial structure of the party as well as its militancy.
The most eloquent was Pons. Despite acknowledging that “Feijóo has it very difficult because he is not willing to do everything to govern”, he certified that the PP is not going to go to the investiture “as if it were an insubstantial or advertising procedure.”
The vice secretary for political action defended the dialogue as a tool for the construction of an alternative government to that of Sánchez on the Onda Cero microphones. And, to this end, he offered Junts a chair, differentiating between the “programmatic coincidences” that the PP maintains with the formation led by Carles Puigdemont and “the actions that four, five or ten people may have committed.”
“It is a party whose tradition and legality are not in doubt” he ended up pointing out to finish packaging the offer.
The inclusion of Junts per Catalunya in the same investiture equation in which Vox appears could put an end to Feijóo’s plan. And this is how the general coordinator of the popular ones assumes it. “It is difficult to approach Junts because of their positions and political demands,” said the Andalusian, but he also insisted that the PP must be allowed “to try, because politics is the art of achieving the possible, and that can only be achieved with dialogue and not putting up walls and trenches”.
The popular ones, at least, count in their favor on the interpretation that Vox has made in the last days of its statutes. As Santiago Abascal has reiterated, those on the extreme right will in no case support a PP government in which one or more nationalist formations have a place. But, in the same way, he will not object to whoever may be the possible external support for the investiture of Feijóo once the popular ones explore the paths that he deems appropriate.
They have the same willingness of the popular to start a dialogue with Junts with the PNV despite accumulating half a dozen express refusals to add their votes. In Genoa they insist on scratching the abstention of the parliamentary group led by Aitor Esteban so that, in a second vote, the 172 supporters of the PP, Vox, UPN and the Canary Islands Coalition can be used to evict Pedro Sánchez from the presidency of the Government.
The Socialists, meanwhile, are watching the moves from a thoughtful background. The 34 days of margin that the president of the Congress, Francina Armengol, decided to grant yesterday to the Popular Party to negotiate their support are more than they would have wanted. And no matter how much his parliamentary spokesman, Patxi López, downplayed this fact yesterday, assuring that “it doesn’t matter if Feijóo has five days or a month” because “the failure is going to be the same”, the Socialists are suspicious of the “exercis of dilation of the popular ones” behind which they see “a strategy to see if they get the repetition of elections”.
Apart from the movements of the PP, the support of Esquerra or the PNV is impossible. The Republicans do not want to see Feijóo as president even in paint, and the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, was in charge yesterday of putting all possible latches on the door of the negotiation: “My party has never voted for the PP and never will , so the investiture of Feijóo does not question us ”.
The Republicans only have eyes for the PSOE, despite the fact that in November of last year, in their eagerness to establish themselves as bulwarks of dialogue and never to abandon it, they even said that they would be willing to sit down at the dialogue table to negotiate amnesty and the right to self-determination in the event that the PP took over Moncloa. Today things have changed and those of Oriol Junqueras will not even see the president of the popular.
The PNV also continues to delay. But unlike ERC, they would hold a meeting with Feijóo. Of course, “complimentary”. “If the PP calls us, I think that out of minimal courtesy you have to go to the meeting,” to get to know each other, said yesterday the spokesman in the Congress of Deputies for the Basque nationalists, Aitor Esteban. “But it’s not going to do anything else,” he added. It was even more graphic in view of the month that awaits them, before the investiture session: “There will be a lot of speculation and a lot of marketing, but there will be no surprises.” In addition, he once again made it clear that the PNV is not going to collaborate in an investiture by Vox.
Who remains hermetic is Junts. The post-convergents returned to the negotiating fold with the pacts for the constitution of the Table, after years denying any possibility of understanding “with the parties of 155”. In an interview in La Vanguardia during the electoral campaign, Míriam Nogueras, JxCat’s number one in Congress, stated that if a PP president is put to the vote “obviously we will vote no.” Yesterday they declined any comment, and although party sources refuse to sit down with the PP, they do admit that contacts may take place. “If they call us and offer us amnesty and self-determination… A dejudicialization of the process, with the practical effects of an amnesty, can also be addressed by the Popular Party,” they point out.
In any case, the key to the negotiation is in the possession of the former president Carles Puigdemont and the general secretary of JxCat, Jordi Turull.
