The Table of Congress is the governing body of the Lower House, the third institution of the State. To preside over it is to exercise the highest authority in the country after the king and the president of the government. It is made up of nine deputies: a president, four vice-presidents and four secretaries. The vice presidents replace the president in the order of his position; the secretaries assume tasks of supervision of the internal management. The parties (or the blocks) seek to have a majority in this body, which has many powers, but essentially gaining control means setting the legislative agenda.
The general elections of the past 23-J left a scenario with two tied blocks with 171 deputies each, with Junts and Coalición Canaria, for the moment not attached to any of the blocks, as key actors for any vote. Before the negotiations to invest a president of the government, the political formations are now focused on getting votes for the table, which will be established on Thursday, August 17.
Through the hands of the nine members of the table, the questions to the Government, proposals of law, proposals not of law and projects of the Government pass so that they are qualified. In addition, the table decides the processing times, can knock down initiatives or requests for reports and decides how many groups there will be, how many commissions and which ones, also the investigation ones. It is also the body in charge of preparing the Chamber’s budget, controlling expenses, managing personnel and hiring, among other functions.
The battle to obtain a majority at the table gained even more strength after the absolute majority that the Popular Party obtained in the Senate in the last general elections. A victory in the Upper House does not allow you to govern, but it does allow you to delay the processing of laws or even add changes to them. A majority in the Senate and at the congressional table for the PP would be a difficulty for another eventual legislature of the coalition government.
The key to having a one block majority at the table is unity. In 2019, Vox and the PP did not agree and freely voted for their own candidates, which allowed PSOE and Unidas Podemos to keep six of the nine seats. Now, if the block on the right manages to understand each other, the Socialists and Sumar will have to seek support in the parties with less representation in order to have the majority.
The members of the table are chosen at the beginning of each legislature by voting in the plenary session of the constitutive session of Congress and the election of each member is carried out in a different way depending on the position.
The president is chosen by majority. The deputies of Congress secretly write a single name on a ballot and the one with the absolute majority of the votes will be elected. In the event that no one obtains said majority, a second vote would be taken. In it, only the two parliamentarians with the most support in the first vote would be eligible, and whoever obtained the most votes in this second vote would be the president.
In the following didactic graph, a random case is exposed in which it is not intended to reflect the current situation, not even in the colors of the parties.
The four vice-presidents and the four secretaries, on the other hand, are chosen in successive order in different votes, depending on who gets the most votes in the respective votes. Each deputy writes a single name, also secretly, on a ballot and the four names with the most votes are elected as vice-presidents and secretaries. In the event of a tie, voting would be held only between the matched candidates until a tie was broken.
With the results coming out of the polls on 23-J, the votes of Junts (7), if those of Puigdemont come out of abstention, and if not those of Coalición Canaria (1), are key to defining which bloc will have a majority in the table because, as in the case of the investiture, it will be these two parties that can break the tie at 171. From there, each of the blocks has practically secured two vice presidencies and two secretaries.
In fact, the Popular Party, with 137 deputies, has secured four of the nine seats, although they will try to negotiate with the Canaries, UPN and Vox to win the presidency. In this sense, the PP could be willing to give up a seat to the ultra-right in exchange for their support and with an eye also on Murcia and Aragon, where negotiations continue to reach a government agreement.
The PSOE, for its part, would also need the favorable vote of the Canary Islands Coalition or Junts to regain control of the country’s third authority, taking into account that the rest of the minority parties (ERC, EHBildu, PNV, BNG) and Sumar already give you their support.
In this sense, the Socialists – the PP does not seem in a position to do so – could offer Junts later support to establish itself as a parliamentary group, something to which those of Puigdemont have no right with the result in hand. This offer could be conditioned to support in the voting for the formation of the table of Congress.
In the votes for vice-presidencies and secretariats, the distribution of votes between blocks is much more important, since it is common for parties on the same side to give up votes to get among the four most voted candidates. Math kicks in.
Given that Congress has 350 deputies, with 71 seats (a fifth), one seat is guaranteed for each vote, since there could not be another four with the same or better result. This already gives the PSOE and the PP two seats at the table each. From then on, both parties could give up some of their support so that other parties, possible governance allies, can enter the governing body as part of the agreements for an investiture.
In the current scenario, the distribution of votes in the right-wing bloc could only take place from the PP towards Vox, and from UPN towards the PP, while in the one on the left, the minority parties could vote for Sumar also counting on the help of the PSOE.
The following is a possible scenario that could occur on August 17, although these projections are more didactic -for the purpose of understanding the political panorama- than factual -as far as these are the most probable sums-.
In this case, as can be seen, the votes of Junts and Coalición Canaria are key to determining the presidency, surely towards the socialist candidate.
In this scenario it has been calculated that, faced with a possible PSOE majority in the presidency, the Socialists would cede two of the four seats to Sumar. The PP, for its part, would cede a secretariat to Vox in exchange for its votes in the vice presidencies and for eventual support in other regions such as Murcia or Aragón. In this way, the nine seats would be divided into 3 for the PSOE and 2 for Sumar, and 3 for the PP and one for Vox.
