Tag Archives: Alliances

SPAIN

Political Maneuvering and Strategic Alliances in Spanish Politics

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Alberto Núñez Feijóo has marked a path. But Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz will follow the one they had already traced, without deviating excessively from the course.

The leader of the PP has just over a month to try to gather support for his inauguration, between September 26 and 27, and the acting president and second vice president will take advantage of every minute before the advance countdown is activated election to do the same.

This Wednesday, shortly after Francina Armengol revealed that she will give the popular time to try to tie up support that today the left sees as impossible, Sumar revealed that she will hand over two deputies to ERC so that they can form their own group.

The PSOE, reluctant to reveal its steps, will do the same with its parliamentarians so that Junts sees this wish fulfilled. It is a courtesy gesture with several precedents, affirmed socialist sources, and confirmed it from the Government without giving many more clues.

A declaration of intent that comes to shield his strategy to form a majority that allows the investiture of Sánchez, which lands one of the demands formulated in the negotiations for the constitution of the Table, on August 17, and which seeks to lay the foundations for generate “confidence”, in the words of a member of the acting Executive.

Armengol’s decision to take into account the wishes of Feijóo, who initially wanted a plenary session as soon as possible and later chose to buy time to try to negotiate, surprised some sectors of the coalition parties.

The most common reading is that they have an extra month before the hands of the clock start to slip, that every minute counts to find the votes they need, which will be very difficult to tie up.

Feijóo has 172 endorsements, but in the PSOE and in Sumar they take it for granted that they can tie the 178 supports that would not only prevent the investiture of the PP leader, but would guarantee that of Sánchez, in the first round.

“Discretion” is the watchword between PSOE, Sumar and the pro-independence formations, but the talks continue. In parallel, Díaz’s party is already openly calling for an amnesty law for those prosecuted and convicted for their role in the Catalan process, a demand by Junts that can have a significant political cost, especially for the Socialists.

In the PSOE, they are more cautious and avoid the word amnesty, but Sánchez has gone from boasting that the independentistas have not achieved this claim, a little over a month ago, to rejecting the socialist mantra that the Constitution would not allow it. Sumar explores this path, and the PSOE does not reject it.

The fit, they explain from the socialist ranks, would be very delicate: beyond its legal dimension, which would have to be studied to the millimeter, it will be necessary to pamper aspects that even go through the name of the future norm, to try to reduce the damage that approval can cause them this amnesty.

On this path, however, in the PSOE and in Sumar they ridicule the actions of a PP that, after the elections, gave Junts legitimacy as an interlocutor, then took it away and for years has been very critical of this party, of Carles Puigdemont and with the group of pro-independence forces. This Wednesday, he recognized the “tradition and legality” of the party of the “fugitive from Justice”.

Seeing how Feijóo plans to talk with ERC, after years of political war between the two, seems almost poetic justice. And they believe, especially in Sumar, that it does not have any margin to scratch support.

That Borja Sémper, spokesman for the PP, appealed again to the socialist deputies, led the spokesman for the PSOE in Congress, Patxi López, to ask him to “stop fooling around”. While the Popular Party walks towards parliamentary failure, they insist, they move towards a plausible investiture.

However, the gesture towards Junts and ERC is not only symbolic. Having your own group guarantees access to an enormous amount of resources, starting with the grant of 30,000 euros per month per group and going through the right to recover the amount invested in electoral shipments on 23-J, and that only economically.

Having their own group guarantees visibility, more time for interventions and allows them to maintain a status that, without this agreement, neither group would have been able to revalidate.

This decision will go ahead by the majority of PSOE and Sumar at the Table (5/4) next Monday, but there are many other open fronts, such as the one that concerns the use of co-official languages in the Lower House, in which they are also working. Feijóo’s full investiture does not frustrate this roadmap.

SPAIN

Political Tensions and Intrigues Surrounding Spanish Congress Formation

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The tension in the block on the right skyrockets. The PP’s decision to leave Vox out of the Congress Table has raised blisters in Abascal’s party, which now leaves free support for Feijóo up in the air in the face of a hypothetical investiture.

The order of the ultra-conservative party further complicates, if possible, the round of consultations between the popular leader and the King and minimizes the chances that he may be commissioned by Felipe VI to try to form a government as the winner of the 23-J elections.

At this moment, Feijóo only has 139 votes in favour, his own plus that of UPN and CC. Sánchez has just signed a majority of 178 deputies, although his partners have also warned that what happened at the Table does not presuppose that they will support an investiture of the socialist candidate.

“We want explanations”, Abascal warned after the constitutive session of the Cortes. “We are somewhat perplexed because it does not seem that preventing the third political force in Spain from staying out of Congress is recovering democratic normality,” he added..

The Vox leader has assured that, at this moment, he cannot answer the question of whether he will continue to support Feijóo without consideration in case he goes to an investiture session, and that he hopes to speak with Genoa in the short term.

Feijóo has been the most affected of the vote this Thursday. The PP has not managed to tie up even the 33 Vox supports for the Presidency of the Chamber. The ultra-conservative party has voted for its own candidate, Ignacio Gil Lázaro, in protest at Genoa’s decision not to cede one of its four positions on the Board to those of Abascal.

This same Wednesday, the leader of the PP boasted of having tied up 172 yeses. But reality has prevailed and has dealt a hard blow to Feijóo, for whom the attempt to force an investiture with his sights set on an electoral repetition is complicated..

The XV legislature has started with an agreement in extremis between Sánchez and the Catalan independence movement, which has allowed the PSOE to save the first match point against the PP and that the socialist Francina Armengol is the one who presides over the Congress with 178 votes in favor against the 139 that the PP candidate, Cuca Gamarra, has achieved, plus the vote in favor of UPN and the Canary Coalition.

Finally, PSOE and Sumar will have the majority in the body that governs the Lower House, since the former Balearic president is the one who breaks the tie between the socialists and their Sumar partners and the popular ones, with four seats each.

The break between PP and Vox has also had consequences for the distribution of the four vice-presidencies. The first is also retained by the PSOE, with Alfonso Rodríguez de Celis at the helm and 113 votes.

The second will be occupied by the popular José Antonio Bermúdez de Castro, who obtained 73 supports in the first vote. Esther Gil (Sumar) breaks the tie with Marta González (PP) in the second vote and takes the third vice presidency, so the PP retains fourth place.

The popular ones consummate, therefore, their decision not to cede one of their positions to Vox, and Ignacio Gil Lázaro loses his seat as fourth vice president of the Table.

The PNV option

The votes made it clear that the possibility of the PNV returning to the body that controls the Lower House did not come to pass. The idea launched by the PP, in an attempt to wrest the majority of the Mesa from socialists and leftists, has been shipwrecked.

Much further has been the possibility launched by the Canary Coalition to give the jeltzales the Presidency of Congress. Aitor Esteban’s party did not publicly pronounce on this possibility, which was contemplated by Sánchez’s investiture partners, but which did not sound good in the PSOE. Finally, the nationalists have come in unity of action with the socialists in this inaugural vote before reopening the melon of the investiture.

The distribution of the secretariats varied with respect to that of the vice-presidencies, since the PSOE agreed with Sumar and the rest of its allies that the first seat will be for Gerardo Pisarello, a member of Yolanda Díaz’s coalition, but coming from the commons of Ada Colau.

Pisarello received 101 votes to the 77 of the socialist Isaura Leal, who will be second secretary after leaving the leadership of the socialist group. His experience and knowledge of the Chamber is behind the election of the PSOE.

The third and fourth secretariats will belong to the popular Guillermo Mariscal and Carmen Navarro, who was already on the Board after replacing Adolfo Súarez Illana when he left politics. The PP did not want to leave a position to Vox here either, which has re-introduced Ignacio Gil Lázaro for the third consecutive vote.

The control body of the Lower House returns to that imperfect bipartisanship that has, on one side, the PSOE and Sumar, and, on the other, the PP alone after its clash with Vox. At the end of the voting, the newly elected Board has taken its seats and the new president, Francina Armengol, has launched the process of compliance with the position of the 350 deputies.