The PP promotes an alliance to prevent the left from controlling the Congress Table

The investiture process is idling, but it does not stop. Yes it is true that the movements are, more or less, buried. And it is also true that there is a clear goal that will be key in what happens next.. That date is August 17, the day that the Cortes that came out of the general elections of 23-J will be formed and who will be the president of Congress and who will accompany him at the Table will be decided.. The operation of the legislature will depend on this decision, the progress of the laws that the future Executive wants to approve.. For this reason, in the PP, although they are aware of the difficulties, they slip the possibility that the majority in the body that governs the operation of the Chamber is not, as it is now, in the hands of the PSOE and Sumar. And thus be able to handcuff, as far as possible, a hypothetical Government headed by Pedro Sánchez.

Currently, the distribution in the Table is favorable to the Coalition Executive, which allows it to order the debates and place, for example, the voting date of the decree-laws. And that is not trivial in a context of extremely tight majorities that will probably encourage the new Executive to resort to this legislative figure that should be exceptional. Of the nine positions at stake, including the presidency, three are from the PSOE, three from Unidas Podemos, two from the PP and one from Vox.. The arithmetic that came out of 23-J will make difficult, if not impossible, that primacy of the left, which now controls six of the nine seats. A 5-4 deal for the block that reaches August 17 with the agreements closed sounds more logical..

To gain control of the Table, PSOE and Sumar need their partners from the investiture block. And also to Junts, since the majority scenario is similar to that of a possible investiture. With these wickers, in the PP there are voices that slip the idea of seducing one of those partners so that the left does not have control of the Table. “Governing by decree-law would come to an end”, points out a popular source, referring to the delay in initiatives that come out of Moncloa and do not have the force of law. The same source admits that there have not yet been negotiations with any of the parties susceptible to this maneuver..

The popular ones have a difficult time convincing, for example, the PNV, who already gave Alberto Núñez Feijóo a loud slam of the door when the Galician wanted to speak with the jeltzales for a possible investiture. With Junts, despite the confusion caused by Pedro Rollán, it seems difficult to reach any kind of agreement. And the same with ERC or Bildu, who are at the center of the PP's strategy to erode Sánchez due to his pact policy. But in Genoa they trust that one of these parties matches their diagnosis and wants a position on the Board that does not leave all control to PSOE and Sumar.

The Socialists, questioned by this possibility, believe it is difficult for the entente to take place. Not because of the strangeness of an alliance of the PP with its investiture partners, but because of the dispute between the nationalist aspirants to keep that seat in the body that governs the operation of the Chamber. In the PSOE, they also admit that the negotiations are in a preliminary phase in this kind of summer rest that the parties have decreed after the elections. The lack of initial agreement between PP and Vox caused the president of the regional Assembly to be the socialist Blanca Martín, despite the fact that popular and ultra-conservatives have the majority in Mérida. Before María Guardiola gave in to pressure from her party and agreed on the regional government with Vox, the president of the Extremadura legislature accelerated the investiture process to make way for the candidate on the most voted list, her partner Guillermo Fernández Vara. The former president of the Junta de Extremadura ended up resigning from the process after Guardiola's step back, but the Assembly Table will already be in the hands of the entire legislature, with three members of the PSOE and one from the coalition of Podemos and IU compared to the two that the PP has.

The message that comes out of Genoa, despite the difficulties, is that Sánchez's partners could raise the demand to be on the Table as a way of controlling the hypothetical Executive. And they reserve the possibility of allying themselves with this wayward partner. It is no coincidence that Andoni Ortuzar, the president of the PNV executive, complained this Monday in an interview in El País about the bad arts of the Executive in Congress. And they remember that the motion of censure that exalted Sánchez came out at the last minute after a change of position, precisely, of the jeltzales.

The relevance of the Roundtable grows in a context like the current one. It has the power to, for example, qualify parliamentary initiatives, set the date of the committees or decide on the agenda of the plenary sessions. With the Senate in the hands of the PP by an absolute majority, the body could speed up as far as possible the processing of regulations that the popular would like to delay in the Upper House. The parties still have to take several steps to reach this goal and the August bridge is in the middle, but it will be the first step to find out the state of the negotiations to find out if the country is approaching a repeat election or for a new government with the current majority, since Sánchez announced this Monday his intention to reissue it. And Feijóo today has little chance of avoiding it if the socialist reaches an agreement with the nationalists.