At Moncloa and Ferraz they do not want to take anything for granted in advance, given the precedents, and they maintain absolute secrecy. But, at the same time, they trust that this week the agreement with Junts per Catalunya will culminate to unblock the Amnesty law. “Let’s see if it can be,” they point out. This way they could catch their breath after a chain of two weeks that were disastrous for their interests, which added wear and tear to the Government and the PSOE.
The alarms began to ring loudly in the face of the socialist collapse in the Galician elections of February 18, which once again demonstrated the loss of territorial and institutional power of the PSOE. And they continued howling, even more so, with the moral and political blow dealt them by the Koldo case, the first major scandal of alleged corruption that broke out during the mandates of Pedro Sánchez.
The deadline to undo the amnesty, which was what allowed the new investiture of Sánchez – whose Government has just completed its first hundred days, without a single second of truce – is this coming Thursday. On March 7, the deadline for the Congressional Justice Commission to issue a new opinion on the Amnesty law ends, which it submits, for debate and vote, to next week’s plenary session.
Despite the disappointment caused by Junts voting against the drafting of the Amnesty law that reached the plenary session of Congress on January 30, Sánchez always assures that there will be an agreement: “There will be an Amnesty law and there will be four years of legislature.” For now, and despite the fact that no one dares to guarantee anything, the PSOE refused to request a new extension this Saturday. Thursday is, therefore, the last chance.
Sánchez does not seem to fear that this day the legislature could explode, if there is no agreement with Junts, since he will not even be in Spain. His agenda places him on Wednesday in Brasilia, on Thursday in São Paulo and on Friday in Santiago de Chile.
Since Junts left the legislature in dead time on January 30, by stopping the parliamentary processing of the amnesty, almost everything has been bad news for the Government and for the possibility of redirecting an agreement. The PSOE lost its footing in Galicia, the Supreme Court fired a new torpedo by opening a criminal case against Carles Puigdemont for alleged terrorism, in line with Judge Manuel García-Castellón, and even Junts’ main negotiator, Jordi Turull, suffered heart failure … The only good news, according to the Government’s interpretation, came last Friday with the draft report of the Venice Commission that, in its opinion, supports the amnesty. Junts and ERC also valued positively the position of the advisory body of the Council of Europe.
Undoing the amnesty this week, as Sánchez intends, could give oxygen to the Government and the PSOE to continue facing the mines that may appear in the way of the judicial investigation of the Koldo case. Since the scandal broke out two weeks ago, Sánchez ordered maximum force to remove all shadows of corruption. But former minister José Luis Ábalos challenged his authority and took the clash to its ultimate consequences, with his departure to the mixed group of Congress.
The unknowns about the scope of the judicial investigations in the Koldo case, and not being able to have control of the times, keep the PSOE on the defensive, while they try to counterattack against the relentless offensive of the Popular Party, which today will formally demand the resignation of the president of Congress, the socialist Francina Armengol.
Unblocking the amnesty, however, could also allow the Government to regain the initiative of the course of the legislature. To begin with, with new general budgets of the State for this year, the first of the mandate. The Executive never threw in the towel, despite the fact that the delay in the amnesty left the new public accounts up in the air. “We have already had contacts, and Junts has not said no to the budgets,” they allege in the Government.
After the Galician setback, in any case, the current electoral cycle continues to put pressure on the PSOE. The socialists are confident of being able to revalidate their government coalition with the PNV without any problems after the Basque elections on April 21. Next will come the European elections on June 9. Sánchez himself postponed until later the process for the renewal of territorial leadership in the PSOE, which could be opened after the celebration of a federal congress next fall.
The problem is that the European elections are also a catastrophe for Sánchez. We must not forget that Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba opened the process for his replacement at the head of the PSOE after the poor results achieved in the European elections in May 2014. His successor, precisely, was Sánchez.
