The new leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, made his debut last week as a senator for Galicia, which gives him the opportunity, as happened yesterday, to face the Prime Minister in weekly control sessions. Pedro Sánchez came to greet him at his seat.
Feijóo maintained a tone away from the harsh character of his predecessor, Pablo Casado, and, as he has been doing since he was elected president of the PP, focused on the proposals, especially those of an economic nature.
He claimed “useful politics” and rejected the politics of “nervousness, disqualifications, insults, few proposals and few reflections”. He assured that “I have not come here to insult, to oppose”.
Both recognized that, from their institutional responsibilities, they had understood each other at the conference of presidents. Sánchez expressed his wish that this way of doing things could be extended to this new stage. “That is the spirit of the Government,” he said, while expressing his desire to “work to achieve maximum consensus,” for which he asked Feijóo for an opposition with a sense of State.
There was much expectation in the Senate for the first face-to-face meeting between the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of the main opposition party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
But despite that constructive tone, understanding does not seem easy, at least right now.
For example, from the brief dialogue yesterday afternoon in the Senate between Sánchez and Feijóo, there is nothing to suggest that the PP is going to approve the renewal of the anti-crisis aid package for which the Government -as Sánchez rightly underlined in one of his speeches – requires the support of other groups.
“The problem, said Feijóo in the reply to the President of the Government, is that “it does not have state partners”
And so the conversation soured. If they both started keeping the forms, they ended up throwing things at each other’s heads. Sánchez concluded by recriminating the PP that “it does nothing but get in the way, get in the way and get in the way.” Feijóo was upset.
The leader of the popular believes he knows what he has to do: insist on his alternative of lowering taxes. He confused the risk premium with the interest rate, which the Government took advantage of to speak of an “erratic, uncomfortable, nervous Feijóo”.
The president of the PP, however, later spoke with the journalists and stressed that his will be a mistake, but the economic policy that leads “families to impoverishment” is more so, and reproaches the Government that when he talks about energy, the Government speaks of renewal of the CGPJ, if it speaks of taxes, the Government speaks of Judicial Power, and does not believe that the solution to inflation is the renewal of the Council. “It is the only thing that interests Sánchez,” Feijóo stressed in his comments at the end of the session.
The leader of the PP made an amendment to the entire economic policy of the Government: “Families are upset with his triumphalism”, and compared him to the driver who goes in the opposite direction and believes that it is the others who are wrong. “You are going in the opposite direction to Spain, and you are going with two co-drivers who do not believe in Spain.”
The president of the PP insisted on his alternative based on lowering the VAT on electricity and hydrocarbons to 5%, and deflating personal income tax to return to citizens part of the money that has been collected in excess, which is 13,200 million, 4,000 more than planned for the whole year, ending with a request, seeing a minister with a folder that could read “Feijóo effect”. “Forget the Feijóo effect, and focus on the inflation effect.”
But Sánchez does not see anything positive in Fejóo’s alternative: “We do what the rest of the countries do,” he concluded.
