“No”. The proposal of the PP candidate for the investiture to include the regional presidents in his round of contacts prior to the final vote in Congress at the end of the month has a resounding response from the Government. Sources from the Presidency have confirmed this Tuesday, after the first meeting of the Executive Council of the new political course, that President Pere Aragonès “has nothing to talk about” with the popular leader and therefore will not meet with him. Meanwhile, the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has also indicated this Tuesday, in his first appearance of the political course, that he will not meet with Alberto Núñez Feijóo before the investiture on the 26th and 27th.
The leader of the Basque Government has wanted to take care of the tone and manners when announcing his position, although he has been clear in pointing out that he does not consider a meeting of this nature appropriate on the eve of the investiture session, being also the leader of a PNV-PSE coalition government.
More exhaustive have been from the Government. “Feijóo is now nothing more than the president of a party”, justify sources from the Presidency, so that Aragonès will join the refusal of his political formation, Esquerra, to meet with the PP to explore support for the investiture of the president of the popular ones, and the rejection that this proposal has been generating among regional presidents of the PSOE.
Feijóo raised this round of meetings in an act in Sotomayor (Pontevedra), with the desire to “learn the position, needs and requirements” of the regional presidents. Sources from his party confirmed that in that round he would not exclude anyone, not even the Catalan president, but the initiative only seems to be reaping, for the moment, the acceptance of his own barons.
Aragonès’ refusal, confirmed by the spokesperson for the Catalan Executive, Patrícia Plaja, at the press conference after the Government meeting, was preceded by the no of PSOE presidents such as María Chivite (Navarra) and Adrián Borbón (Asturias). . At the moment, the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García Page, has not commented on the matter, nor has the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, of the Canary Islands Coalition, a formation that has already announced its support for the candidate of the PP for investiture.
The Government spokesperson has argued that “there is nothing to talk about a hypothetical investiture between the PP and Vox”, but has also reported that to date, the PP has not submitted a formal proposal for the meeting with the president. When it arrives, if it arrives, Aragonès will reject it.
The position of the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has come after the first meeting of the political course of the Basque Government, held like every August at the Miramar Palace in Donostia/San Sebastián.
The leader of the Basque Executive has explained that Feijóo wrote to him this Monday, calling him to a meeting, it is understood that by telephone or videoconference, before the investiture on June 26 and 27.
Urkullu has indicated that he informed the popular leader that this Tuesday he would have the first Governing Council of the political year, a session in which he would meet with the advisers of his PNV-PSE coalition Executive, and that he wanted to transfer this call to his team . He did it this morning and, later, he reported his position at a press conference.
“Talking is always good, it is always good. However, there are different times. It is not the same to speak before the 26th, than to do it after ”, she has indicated, making it clear that he will not meet with Feijóo in the next five weeks.
“At this moment it is up to the political parties to negotiate, where appropriate, for the conformation of majorities and the election of president. It does not correspond to the presidents of autonomous communities, which as Núñez Feijóo knows, except in the case of Euskadi, Catalonia and Euskadi are governed by PP or PSOE”, has sentenced.
The lehendakari’s pronouncement is expressive of the position that the PNV wants to play in the coming weeks. The jeltzales will not support Feijóo. They have expressed it actively and passively since the electoral campaign. Before the elections on July 23, the PNV already made it clear that its support for a hypothetical investiture of the PP was impossible if it involved the Vox contest.
On July 23, before the count ended, the results showed that the PP would need Vox to reach Moncloa, and in Sabin Etxea they already ruled out that route. The following day, the Executive of the PNV ratified the decision not to explore that option and, in the evening, Andoni Ortuzar, president of the party, transferred to Feijóo the “refusal of the PNV to start talks in order to facilitate his investiture”. .
The matter, however, was not settled there. On August 7, Vox announced its willingness to allow a PP government without demanding its entry into the government. The spotlights turned back to the PNV. That same day, however, party sources told La Vanguardia that “everything was the same” and referred to what was stated on July 24. A day later they insisted on this same idea through a message on social networks. Nor was this positioning enough to make his position clear enough, at least in the eyes of certain political and media actors.
The hypothesis of an eventual understanding of the PNV with the PP has resurfaced in recent days, following the investiture session of Feijóo called for September 26 and 27. The PNV indicated, indeed, that it will meet with the popular leader, although the party’s spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, insisted on his position: “We cannot be in combinations in which Vox enters.”
An interview this Sunday in the newspaper El Correo with the former deputy general of Bizkaia Alberto Pradera, former leader of the PNV who held office between 1987 and 1995, in which he asks his party to abstain “in the investiture of Feijóo because Vox no longer it is in the equation”, has once again opened the way to speculation.
The lehendakari has been clear this Tuesday in stressing that his party has repeatedly expressed its position, while remarking that the PP “needs Vox’s votes in the investiture and would need them throughout the legislature.”
Urkullu, in any case, does not want to offend the PP. The jeltzales want to take care of their relations with the popular and will try to prevent the destruction of the bridges that they have been rebuilding since the arrival of Feijóo to the presidency of the party. The PNV is already thinking about negotiating with the PSOE for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, but it will seek to maintain its own profile and avoid appearing as just another ally of the left-wing bloc. The jeltzales will seek centrality and their own profile throughout a political course marked by the Basque elections next spring.
