Political Maneuvering and Negotiations Surrounding Feijóo’s Government Formation Efforts

The King’s commission to Alberto Núñez Feijóo to try to form a government not only activates the electoral counter.

It also limits to one month the term that the PP leader has to seek the four supports that he lacks to save a sufficient majority that will take him to Moncloa. It is not an easy task.

In fact, it is “almost impossible”, according to important party leaders. But Feijóo, they say in the national leadership of the party, must “fight until the end” and seek the votes, if necessary, from under the stones.

The popular leader is already putting together his contact agenda, which he will launch starting next week.

One of the clear and primary objectives that they contemplate in Genoa is to invite the acting head of the Executive to a formal meeting with the candidate for the investiture. Go or not, they understand in the PP, the offer is intended to show who was “the winner of the elections” and who was “the loser”.

The party has no hope that Sánchez will accept Feijóo’s outstretched hand in any way to allow a government in the minority of the most voted list, the proposal that the popular leader defended over and over again during the electoral campaign.

The popular ones assume that the socialist leader maneuvers in parallel to tie his own parliamentary majority, with the help of nationalists and independentistas.

This Wednesday, without going any further, both Sumar and the PSOE have assigned two deputies each to ERC and Junts so that they have their own group in the Lower House.

But the PP still harbors some hope. Genoa celebrates that Francina Armengol has given in to her proposal to delay the investiture session to September 26 and 27, and they reiterate that if they already considered the vote lost, they would have asked to end a debate as soon as possible in the last week of August to force elections before Christmas.

It was the initial roadmap, but the PP has recovered some optimism after achieving the King’s order. “We have to negotiate. Everything is possible”, reiterated a senior official from Genoa. “You have to be patient, because politics changes a lot. It is difficult, but not impossible”, adds a regional baron.

What is also taken for granted in the party is that Feijóo will try to find possible internal fissures in the ranks of the Socialists and will look for leaders who are critical of Sánchez’s strategy and his alliance with Puigdemont, on whom it depends entirely to re-edit the coalition. of government.

Already in the campaign, the leader of the PP advanced that, if he won the elections, he would call the PSOE barons to put pressure on Sánchez and for him to abstain from his investiture.

This scenario is discarded, but not the option of attracting possible disscolos, but not facing Feijóo’s investiture, but dynamiting a possible intention of the socialist candidate in Congress if he ties himself to Junts and ERC.

Especially if the payment is amnesty, as the Executive already values, or new steps towards Catalan self-determination.

Feijóo starts the round of contacts with a total of 172 supports in his pocket, his own 137 plus Vox’s 33 and the two from UPN and Coalición Canaria. An important majority that, however, is overshadowed by the majority of noes that it continues to have in the Lower House. Sánchez’s block seems impregnable.

But the leader of the PP will make a desperate attempt to attract the PNV, which has already denied Feijóo up to five times. Those of Ortuzar do contemplate a “courtesy” meeting with the investiture candidate, but they insist that they will not facilitate a PP government.

At this point, the PP will focus its dialogue with the jeltzales on the economic level, and will try to tempt them with more “financing” and “investments”, without ruling out a new Basque quota. Feijóo already demonstrated at the beginning of the year his commitment to the specificity of the tax system and the autonomy of the Basque Country when he distanced himself from Ciudadanos and Vox in the Senate and joined his votes to PSOE and PNV to process through the emergency route, without going through by commission or admit amendments, the updating of the quota and Basque concert.

It was one more gesture in his attempt to rebuild the bridges with the nationalists. But, for now, it has not managed to open cracks in the alliance between the PNV and Sánchez.

The popular ones also allude to the “responsibility” of those from Ortuzar to operate in an “intelligent” way within the framework of the investiture and mark distances with a block in which Bildu “is eating it by the feet”.

The proximity of the Basque elections reduces the margin for the PNV to get out of the pot and position itself in an equation in which, in addition, Vox is found.

But the popular leader could play one last trick with the jeltzales: not demand their yes to Feijóo’s investiture, but, at least, agree that they will not facilitate Sánchez’s either..

Together, valid interlocutor

The PP will only exclude EH Bildu from its round of contacts. But he will speak with the rest of the parliamentary forces, including the ERC or Junts. It is a strategic turn of Feijóo that denotes a certain anguish for not staying at the gates of Moncloa.

Just a few weeks ago, different spokespersons based in Genoa publicly denied that the PP was going to sit with the party of Carles Puigdemont, a “fugitive from Justice” and a “coup plotter” whose initials are “outside the Constitution”.

But the frame seems to have changed. So much so that the institutional deputy secretary, Esteban González Pons, minimized the process of “four people, five or 10” and justified his intention to call Junts in that it is a party “whose tradition and legality are not in doubt”. The goal is an abstention. The limits, they insist, continue to be in the Constitution.