The head of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez (PSOE), will respect the investiture attempt of Alberto Núñez Feijóo (PP), but he is already working on his own, since he believes that “only” his party “is capable of build a sufficient parliamentary majority” for this purpose.
This was confirmed yesterday by the socialist candidate and acting president at the press conference he gave after meeting with King Felipe VI at the Palace of Z arzuela. His compliance with the Monarch’s decision will be unequivocal. But the stubbornness of the leader of the PP to present himself at the investiture without the necessary supports raises more doubts. To the extent that he blamed the former president of the Xunta de Galicia for any responsibility derived from an attempt that he predicts will be “wasteland”.
“An investiture session is not an exhibition procedure. Its sole purpose is to obtain the necessary parliamentary support to form a new government”, scolded Sánchez to the head of the opposition from the lectern of the Palau de la Moncloa.
In addition, he added that the investiture will “fail, because there is only a possible parliamentary majority, as required by article 99.3 of the Constitution, and it is a progressive majority led by the PSOE”, he ruled, although he did not it still has the support of the PNB, EH Bildu, ERC and Junts, which it did receive on Thursday in the votes for the constitution of the Courts.
“If, after the elections of 23-J and the election of the Congress Bureau, he wants for the third time to come face to face with a reality emanating from the will of the people, he is within his right. But there is no other alternative than re-editing a government of progress”, he reiterated looking at the camera.
Interpretations aside, the PSOE does not mind the path the PP has taken. Socialist sources understand that Feijóo’s failed attempt benefits them, since it is clear that the popular “do not have the necessary parliamentary majority”. Although, in return, they are aware that the clock will start ticking even before the end of August, which would force Sánchez to close the necessary agreements before the end of October.
Including those that will have to sign with ERC and Junts, the two Catalan pro-independence formations, which are the ones that have shown the most reluctance since 23-J to be added to the equation of an investiture.
For this reason, and after the three-way commitments for the election of Francina Armengol (PSOE) as president of the Congress of Deputies, Sánchez alluded from government headquarters to a possible amnesty for those accused of the process.
The general secretary of the PSOE did not detail the formula to be explored or its scope. He did not even propose a calendar of performances. But he also did not close the door, as some leaders of the PSOE have done in the previous days, to one of the premises set by Carles Puigdemont in his list of demands to sign any investiture agreement with the PSOE and that it will be on which the negotiation will be based. Although he did guarantee the constitutionality of the steps to be taken: “Dialogue is the method and the Constitution is the framework” he reiterated three times.
When they specifically asked him if he considered this law to be constitutional, Sánchez avoided answering, claiming that it is not up to him to say what is constitutional and what is not. “For this, fortunately, there is the Constitutional Court”, he added.
The acting president of the Spanish Government defends the need to “continue working for coexistence”, the path taken during the last legislature and for which the coalition Government of the PSOE and Unides Podemos already favored the controversial pardons of the pro-independence leaders convicted of referendum of 1-O, the repeal of sedition and the reduction of embezzlement.
And to arm himself with reasons he put on the table “the work of normalization and stabilization” carried out by his government, which found an “inherited situation, with a unilateral declaration of independence and the corresponding judicial consequences”. “In view of the situation in Catalonia and the electoral results on July 23 and May 28, it seems quite clear that Catalan society is betting on reunion and coexistence,” he said.
