“He will govern, but he will not enjoy the investiture”. It is a way of explaining the opposition that Alberto Núñez Feijóo is preparing against Pedro Sánchez. “What she deserves”, say sources from the national leadership of the PP, who explain that she will “adapt to her decisions”, but with one thing clear: “We will not be condescending”, they warn. “No one can expect a generous opposition” from the PP to the Sánchez Government. It will therefore be a “very tough” opposition, “without concessions”, “to the death”, because the popular people are not prepared to give him “even water”, after how Sánchez has reached the presidency of the Government, and the way in which Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been treated by the PSOE and by the head of the Executive himself.
To make this opposition effective, the leadership of the PP starts from a premise, “the no bloc to Sánchez is much more consolidated than the yes bloc”. That is to say, from the outset, and without the need for a joint strategy with Vox, the “no to Sánchez” bloc is much more solid than the “yes” bloc, they explain in the popular leadership, so that every time the president of the central government wants to take forward any initiative, he will have, to begin with, 171 votes against, those of the PP, Vox and UPN, while the Executive will have to negotiate with five parties, which will not make it easy at all.
The PP is not only talking about the pro-independence parties. “There is a lot of focus on Puigdemont, but Podemos can be a bigger headache”, warn the sources, convinced that Ione Belarra’s people will want to make their mark, represent the most left-wing part of the Government, which will difficult for the Executive to combine the positions of PNB and Podemos, for example, in the budgets. That is to say, Sánchez will have to negotiate with Junts, ERC, Bildu, the PNB, but also with Podemos, “which must be noticed”.
The popular ones emphasize that even though the PSOE wants to compare this legislature with the previous one, it is not even similar. Then, they remember, the PSOE had a wild card, which was Ciutadans, and if one of its members failed it could turn, as it did more than once, to Bildu. Now, no. He needs the support of all those who voted for his inauguration to be able to move forward with anything. “Sánchez has no plan B”. The PP has nothing to do, simply wait or, at the very least, try to put the zitzania between the coalition partners. Then, the warning that Feijóo gave to Sánchez, during the investiture, “don’t look for me”, will make sense. “He will not find protection here”, they say.
And to carry out this whole strategy, the PP will not have to accept a unit of action with Vox, which Feijóo does not want but which Santiago Abascal himself has asked of him in public and in private. “We will not allow ourselves to be dragged down by Vox”, they say to the popular leadership, convinced that neither the PSOE’s attempt to equate the PP with Vox nor the accusation that Feijóo gives wings to the ultra-right have no recourse, because, in their opinion , the facts deny it. In this sense, from Génova it is recalled that they have not given in to Vox’s request not to admit the amnesty law to the Senate, that they have not approved, despite having the votes, the illegalization of Junts and ERC , as raised in the Upper House by those of Abascal, who have not “pressured the police at the gates of Ferraz”.
The PP, the sources consulted underline, has its own strategy, and it is an autonomous party that does not need another party to carry it out, as it seems that Abascal does.
They refer to the fact that the president of Vox appeared in the rally called by the PP against the amnesty at the Puerta del Sol, the last popular mobilization, until the one that will be held on the Sunday before Constitution Day. They also refer to the fact that Abascal presented himself on Wednesday in the plenary of the European Parliament in which the consequences that the PSOE’s agreements with the pro-independence parties for the investiture of Sánchez could have for the rule of law were debated. A plenum held at the initiative of the PP and its partners in the European People’s Party, which the leader of Vox, according to the opinion of the people, has tried to make profitable “with a photo”, as if it were his initiative.
Those of Feijóo have a very defined strategy, they underline, and it does not go through Vox, because the PP is enough on its own, they say. The sources consulted contrast the numbers of one and the other and warn that those of Abascal cannot even present an appeal of the unconstitutionality of the amnesty law, something that the PP will be able to do, and remember that Vox has lost all the legal initiatives it has raised so far. They also cannot request the convening of the conference of presidents, nor do they have the territorial power to make a counter-power to Sánchez, they point out.
The popular leadership is clear that it is the PP, and not Vox, who is leading the response to the Sánchez Government regarding amnesty both in the streets, with the mass mobilizations it has called, and in Congress, with the recusal of one of the lawyers who reported on the amnesty law proposal; or in the Senate, reforming the Chamber’s regulations to slow down its processing.
The PP is trying to break the discourse of the socialists that is benefiting Vox and that what it has to do is stop it. In the popular leadership they consider that “the best way to deactivate Vox is to win it”, and that is what the PP is determined to do. Not like the PSOE, they say, which no longer conceives the possibility of going to an election if it is not in tandem with Sumar.
Making coalition governments with Vox profitable is the strategy that the PP plans to follow, as it has been until now. It happened, people remember, in Madrid or Andalusia, where Juanma Moreno and Isabel Díaz Ayuso in their first legislatures depended on Vox, despite the fact that it was not in their governments, and that after four years they have achieved absolute majorities.
The latest example, they emphasize in the direction of the PP, is that of Castilla y León, where the PP has governed for the longest time with Vox, and where Abascal’s party obtained one deputy in the general elections, and the PP, 18. “This is indeed stopping Vox”, they conclude in the PP.
