If for the popular ones the summons of the PSOE to have six face to face between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo was surreal, the response of the Popular Party is not far behind. The popular accept a face to face, but with whom? It leaves it in the hands of PSOE and Sumar, who are part of the same government. And if there is no agreement, he proposes a three-way debate between Sánchez, Feijóo and Yolanda Díaz. The PP thus tries to open a gap between the two coalition parties. The PSOE rejected the proposal, but Sumar accepted it immediately.
The PP’s deputy secretary for institutional policy, Esteban González Pons, responded yesterday to the letter from the PSOE organization secretary, Santos Cerdán, dated twenty days ago, once the deadline for submitting the electoral lists had closed. And already knowing “with certainty that the Government is going to the next elections represented by two candidacies and not by three”, as it could have happened if Podemos had not joined Sumar.
The PP proposal is that Feijóo “is willing” and accepts a “face to face” debate. But, since the Executive is the first in the coalition, the letter says, “the PP is waiting for the two forces that make up the coalition government to communicate who they designate for the debate.”
The PP thus offers Feijóo a face to face with Sánchez or with Díaz, with whom the two decide by mutual agreement. In other words: “We accept a face to face with Sánchez, if the candidate Díaz delegates to him the representation of the wing of the Government that she directs.”
In case the two partners do not agree, the PP offers that this debate be three, between Feijóo, Sánchez and Díaz. He would also be willing to meet four, with the three of them and the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal. Although he stresses that representatives of ERC, EH Bildu and the PNV should join.
The PSOE leadership received the letter from González Pons with intemperate cajas: “The letter exudes the same lack of respect and the same lackadaisical tone that permeates all the statements of the PP.” And despite noticing his “provocations”, he pointed out that it is not the PP who will determine the debates, but the convening communication groups -RTVE, Atresmedia, Mediaset and Prisa-, who requested to hold meetings between Sánchez and Feijóo, and debates between the candidates of the four main formations that concur in the elections, that is, PSOE, PP, Vox and Sumar. He also added his willingness to hold sectoral debates, especially on economic policy, to confront Vice President Nadia Calviño with whomever Feijóo determines. A debate that the PP rejects, alleging that Calviño does not appear as a candidate on the electoral lists of the PSOE.
“We notice the same eagerness to look for pretexts and avoid debates at all costs,” lamented the Socialists, who once again summoned Feijóo to decide which of the debates proposed by the media groups he is willing to accept and which he is not.
All of this was formalized by Ferraz’s organization secretary, Santos Cerdán, with a letter of response to González Pons. When Sánchez challenged Feijóo to celebrate six face to face, one every week until 23-J, the PP rejected him: “Spain is not for eccentricities.” And yesterday Cerdán also branded the conditions of the PP as “eccentricity”. “I have not been surprised that you continue trying to lengthen this process so that debates are not held,” warned the PSOE organization secretary. With an undisguised taunt: “I understand that the skills of your candidate should worry you a lot for you to be taking so much trouble and reputational cost to your party.” And in the Moncloa they corroborate it: “When one does not have arguments, he does not want to debate,” they warn.
Cerdán lamented the “strategy of delaying or even canceling the debates” that he attributed to the PP, and warned that it offers “an elusive and fearful image in the face of a much-needed contrast of ideas.”
At Moncloa they insist that the main face-to-face meeting must take place between the only two possible presidents of the Government after 23-J, Sánchez and Feijóo, and as many times as possible. But, in line with Yolanda Díaz’s demand, from Sumar they immediately picked up the PP’s gauntlet to hold a debate for three: “It looks more like Spain today than a debate for two.”
