After a day that shook the expectations of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the popular leader’s file returns to the starting box: the one he occupied on July 23. Now, almost a month later, the president of the Popular Party says he has the same reasons, despite the break on Thursday with Vox for the presidency of the Table of Congress, to try to run for the presidency of the government, if the King proposes it , even if I don’t get it.
The “no” of the PNV, repeated so many times, and Vox’s opposition to the Basque nationalists entering the equation make their investiture impossible. Feijóo, popular sources say, is aware of this, but he will try. For this reason, on Tuesday, in the round of consultations, he will tell Felipe VI that he has 171 or 172 votes, depending on what the Canary Islands Coalition (CC) does.
Vox’s confirmation, yesterday, that Feijóo continues to have his 33 votes to be elected president, despite his anger at having been excluded from the Congress Table, means that the popular leader can appear before the King as the candidate who, if At the moment, he has more support, even if it is not enough. And if the King offers it to him, he will accept the challenge.
PP sources stress that, contrary to the discourse “that the socialists want to impose”, the constitutive session of Congress “does not represent a setback for Feijóo”, but rather the contrary. Despite not having achieved the presidency of the Chamber, “it has been seen that the Canary Islands Coalition is willing to vote with the PP, even knowing that we were going to lose”, with which Pedro Sánchez is closed the Canary route, which at some point moment he shuffled, so that his investiture only required the abstention of Junts.
So Feijóo prepares to go to the appointment with the King and tell him that if he is designated a candidate, he is willing to go, even if he does not have enough votes. It is, they say in the PP, that nobody can blame Feijóo for what is known as the Arrimadas syndrome; that is to say, that no one can reproach him “that he has not tried it”. It will be, they say in the PP, “the visualization that we have won the elections”, even if he loses the investiture, but it will also be an opportunity to present a government program, which could well be the first electoral act, if the elections have to be repeated , they underline.
So yes, Feijóo “will try the investiture”. There is only one thing that would lead him to resign, that Pedro Sánchez present himself with a closed agreement, signed and confirmed by the signatories, which guarantees that he has a majority to be president.
It would be, then, a similar situation, saving the distances, to the one that occurred in Extremadura, when the break between PP and Vox caused the socialist Fernández Vara to run for office, despite not having the necessary support. When the popular and those of Abascal reached an agreement to invest María Guardiola, Vara resigned.
This position is mostly shared in the PP and among its barons, who ensure that there are no disagreements about Feijóo’s leadership. These sources indicate that the PSOE “would like” the popular leader to “surrender” and see Sánchez as the only possible candidate.
What happened on Thursday was analyzed by Feijóo with a small group of PP leaders meeting on Thursday afternoon. Contrary to the image that was given, the sources consulted assure that there was no lack of foresight. That it was a risk that had to be taken if one wanted to have any chance, and that is what was done, despite the image of a break from the right. They say it was “within the foreseeable”. And despite the omens that Feijóo was left alone, yesterday Vox confirmed that everything remains the same.
It was the secretary general of the extreme right, Ignacio Garriga, who dispelled the doubts that Abascal did not want to clarify, clearly, on Thursday in Congress. Although he reproached the leadership of the popular for the gesture of “contempt and arrogance” that meant, in his opinion, not lending him the votes so that those of Vox would win a vice presidency in the governing body of Congress, Garriga assured that they continue to “willing” to put its 33 deputies at the service of the PP. “We are people of our word,” he stressed, while warning that “votes cannot be obtained in exchange for offenses.”
The photograph of the right voting divided in the constitution of the Table remains, for the moment, in a disagreement. Party sources explain that her position remains immovable. And that is to convince the ranks of the PP that the “reliable” and “essential” partner is Vox. “The only one who is willing to talk with them” to make a common front of the right from now on: either as opposition to the government this legislature or in the face of new elections.
