After two days of hearings with the different political leaders with representation in the Congress of Deputies, King Felipe VI has proposed Alberto Núñez Feijóo as a candidate for the investiture as Prime Minister. The leader of the Popular Party has 172 guaranteed votes after the support “with conditions” from the extreme right. A figure that does not guarantee success in the investiture session.
Mystery solved. The president of the Popular Party has a free hand to go to Congress to try to be invested as president of the Government, as he has claimed this afternoon from King Felipe VI at the close of the round of consultations. This was announced by the president of Congress, Francina Armengol, after going to Zarzuela to find out the monarch’s decision. The third authority of the State will telephone the candidate designated by the King in the next few minutes to start exploring times for the date.
Almost at the same time that Armengo appeared from the Congress Desk Room, the Casa del Rey has issued a statement stating that Núñez Feijóo has conveyed to the King his willingness to be a candidate for the investiture process. As a consideration, the text states that the Popular Party has been the political group that has obtained the largest number of seats in the last general elections, one of the arguments that the leader of the Popular Party has used to assert his intention to attend to the investiture, despite the fact that he is not guaranteed enough votes to avoid being defeated.
The Casa del Rey has considered it appropriate to point out that, except in the XI legislature, in all the general elections since the entry into force of the Constitution, the candidate of the political group that has obtained the greatest support at the polls has been the first to be proposed by the King as a candidate for the Presidency of the Government.
“This practice has become a custom over the years,” the statement said. In the round of consultations, Felipe VI has verified that, to this day, there is not a sufficient majority for the investiture that, in his case, “would cause this custom to decline.” An allusion to the closed support with which the socialist candidate, Pedro Sánchez, has come to Zarzuela.
