The Popular Party and Vox closed an agreement in Aragon this Thursday night that guarantees that Jorge Azcón can be sworn in as president of the community next week. To reach the pact, the popular ones have finally had to renounce their claim to a solo government and have ended up ceding to the ultra party a vice-presidency, which will be held by the regional leader of Vox, Alejandro Nolasco, and two ministries: Agriculture and Territorial Development, Depopulation and Justice, which will fall to the vice president.
In principle, the official announcement of the pact will be made public this Friday. In this way, everything indicates that next Monday the Table of the Cortes and the Board of Spokespersons will be convened so that the investiture plenary session begins on Wednesday with the candidate’s speech. On Thursday the second part of the debate would be held, with the intervention of all the groups and the final vote, which will allow the replacement of the acting Executive headed by Javier Lambán more than two months after the elections were held.
With this pact in hand, the fine print of which is still unknown, the PP would no longer need the collaboration of the Aragonese Party and Teruel Existe, two formations with which it has maintained contacts until recent days. Although the former was open to reaching agreements with the ultra-right under certain conditions, those of Tomás Guitarte flatly refused to facilitate a government in which Vox was present.
In Aragon, the PP was the clear winner in the last May elections, when it won 28 of the 67 seats in the Cortes. Although the seven Vox deputies gave him a comfortable absolute majority, Azcón always maintained that his intention was to govern alone and explored different options. However, Vox ruled out his abstention and threatened to vote against him along with the left bloc if he was not part of the Executive.
After the electoral crash of the 23-J elections, voices from the ranks of Vox increased urging the popular to close an agreement as soon as possible similar to the one reached in Valencia. Apparently, the voxists aspired as a starting point to a vice presidency and three councils. To lower these expectations, the popular ones would have asserted the transfer of the presidency of the Cortes to the ultra Marta Fernández, in office since the end of June.
With this there are already three autonomous governments of the Popular Party of which Vox will also be a part. In Valencia, the president and militant of the PP, Carlos Mazón was the first to close an agreement with the ultranationalists, to whom he gave a vice-presidency that includes the direction of the Culture area, and the Justice and Interior and Agriculture ministries.
In Extremadura, where, in the elections of May 28, the party with the most votes was the PSOE, Vox entered the executive despite the initial resistance of the current president, the popular María Guardiola, who, in this way, guaranteed the sufficient support to reach the position. Guardiola, like Azcón in Aragon, initially intended to govern alone.
The last of the governments still pending an agreement between the conservatives and the extreme right is that of Murcia but it is likely that, after the Aragon agreement, its president, the popular López Miras, will also give in. Otherwise there will be elections again.
