Not even in their wildest dreams did the PP expect an outcome like what happened yesterday in Congress. The faces of satisfaction among the popular ranks, who have been protesting in the street against the Amnesty law for months, were representative of what they had just witnessed. It didn’t take much effort for them to overturn the procedure they already saw approved. To vote against it there were already Junts, which has given them time. At most one more month to continue to oppose the text head-on and so that the “prevaricating judges” as Miriam Nogueras pointed out not once or twice yesterday, but many times, can continue diving into cases that ‘were flourishing.
Together he fulfilled the threat sent on Monday to vote against the procedure, waiting for a gesture from the Socialists and for their amendments to be included. In the previous votes, the bet had served them well and they had ended up getting “compensation” from the socialists. This time the PSOE stood up.
Some will once again call these turns of the script in the art of negotiation a “master move”, but the position it leaves for the others – PSOE and ERC – is that Junts is not a trustworthy party and that the change of course no to the pragmatism that many had sensed after Pedro Sánchez’s investiture was a simple mirage. The president of the party, Laura Borrà s, had already warned a few days ago that “we do not want to contribute to governance” and they have done so.
The law may end up derailed and it will not be because the judges declare it unconstitutional or because the European justice overturns it, it may fail before reaching the Senate. The image of post-convergents voting against penal oblivion together with the PP and Vox group seems like a full-blown warning.
Junts now wants to resume negotiations as soon as possible. Back to the path of dialogue. It will not be easy to re-establish the bridges in the new climate of mistrust of socialists and republicans who lived yesterday with astonishment. Yesterday Oriol Junqueras wanted to calm the spirits, but at ERC they cannot hide their disappointment at the outcome. Nor did the messages sent from the podium by deputy Pilar Vallugera in which she advised Junts not to fall into the “judges’ trap” serve to change their position.
There are weeks ahead and with a Galician campaign in the middle that gives the PSOE incentives to negotiate immediately. As the political landscape is, a lot can happen these days, and Junts has given time.
