Pedro Sánchez has warned, during the intervention with which the PSOE federal committee has started, which is being held this Saturday in Ferraz, that the Popular Party and the far-right of Vox have insisted “machaconamente” on the same two mantras since he arrived at Moncloa in 2018. The first is that his government, first alone and now in coalition with Unidas Podemos, is “illegitimate.” And the second is that early general elections must be called. This is the same claim of the motion of censure that will be debated next week in Congress, promoted by Santiago Abascal and with the alternative candidacy for the presidency of the veteran Ramón Tamames. “Why are they so desperate to put an end to the legislature? Why so much impatience? Because the Government governs for the majority and does not bow down to the powerful”, Sánchez stressed.
“The economic right and its political and media terminals do not want Spain to advance,” said the leader of the PSOE. “That is why they denied the legitimacy of this government and are demanding early elections tirelessly,” he criticized.
But Sánchez has highlighted that there are two big differences between the first motion of censure that Vox promoted against him, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic in October 2020, and the one that will be debated and voted on next Tuesday and Wednesday in Congress. The first difference, he has pointed out, is that the leader of the extreme right, Santiago Abascal, now “does not show his face”, and will present an “interposed candidate”, in reference to Ramón Tamames. The head of the Executive, in any case, has emphasized the second big difference that he observes in this new motion of no confidence, since the PP goes from voting against Pablo Casado to the abstention that Alberto Núñez Feijóo now defends. Sánchez, thus, has insisted on highlighting that the PP leader is “approaching” Vox. “The reason is simple: Feijóo’s project involves forming governments with the ultra-right wherever he joins,” he pointed out, referring to the municipal and regional elections on May 28. “The PP has gone from collusion to collusion with Vox,” he denounced.
Sánchez, however, has assured that the PSOE “comes out to win” on March 28, “convinced of the strength of the socialist project in the most adverse circumstances.” “We have advanced steadily in the reforms”, he has defended. And he has focused, especially, on the labor reform and the recent pension reform, agreed with the unions and with the approval of Brussels. The Chief Executive has celebrated having reached “big agreements” with these reforms, with dialogue and “guaranteeing social peace.”
The President of the Government has especially highlighted the “social peace” with which he has achieved these reforms. Not surprisingly, Sánchez is the first president for whom a labor and pension reform does not cost him a major general strike, as Mariano Rajoy, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero or José María Aznar suffered. He has even recalled that Rajoy “proudly” assumed that his labor reform was going to cost him a general strike, as it did.
“For the right, decent pensions are an unsustainable luxury, for us they are an inalienable right,” Sánchez has defended. And he has criticized the opposition to the pension reform already announced by Feijóo, after the big employers have set the pace for him, referring to the criticism of the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi. “The right wing is once again portraying itself and being left alone,” Sánchez denounced.
The head of the Executive has thus warned that the “hidden plan” of the PP and Vox, for which they demand to advance the general elections without waiting for December, is to reverse all the social reforms and advances in rights achieved in this legislature, and return to apply the neoliberal recipes with which Rajoy responded to the financial crisis of a decade ago, when “they froze pensions and depressed wages.” “The PP program is that of 2013: freeze pensions and cut the welfare state. And the far-right program is the same, but with more fanfare and a plus of aggressiveness”, Sánchez criticized.
