Tag Archives: Investiture

SPAIN

Analyzing the Systemic Nature of Political Choices: Democracy, Economy, and Reforms

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This week, we have the national conversation taken over by the heat and two summer snakes: Rubiales and Thailand. However, what is coming will be more lasting.. And also more dramatic.

There will be speculation and disqualifications, the hoaxes will be uncorked, the news will come to us tinged with reality television. We will see fog of war in the whole landscape of September.

But, despite everything, there will be a moment of truth: an investiture at a critical time for Spain. We will see efforts to water down its significance in the eyes of public opinion. The Sherpas of the ruling party are already leading the way, placing the epithet failed that Moncloa selected.

They will be followed by the Tertullian troop, with military enthusiasm and the additional task of continuing to whitewash the amnesty. And, meanwhile, from the digital side, will come the spread of all kinds of conspiracies around the PP.

The same authors who denounced —with great feigned moral scandal— the dehumanization of Sánchez script, shoot and project new and violent chapters in multichannel mode for the destruction of Feijóo. Populism is also distinguished by the victimization capacity displayed by the aggressor.

Speculations cannot be avoided. There are only three paths towards the viability of the investiture: four votes of the PSOE, the abstention of the PNV or the exit of the muchachada de Puigdemont. Everything seems to indicate that interest will be concentrated around the latter, who, for the moment, has not said “this mouth is mine” regarding the investiture of the popular.

The foreseeable thing is that he does not raise his cards until the end. His silence reinforces his position of strength. Sánchez is very demanding now, he has to accelerate to close his negotiation with the man from Girona before the Galician begins his investiture speech. The rest is Russian roulette.

And speeding up means giving up. Not signing where indicated in Waterloo is a high-risk move for those who have just seen death in the race to the polls. Seen like this, it seems clear that he has a problem. Seen in panoramic mode, the pressure of the separatists is a problem for our country. We are facing an all or nothing game.

Precisely for this reason, the first investiture will be a transcendent trance, because it will be systemic and the following will not. And the systemic or anti-systemic character of the next Executive will not be innocuous for our society.

When an investiture is systemic, a government program is presented that is basically structured around three pillars:

protecting democracy from deterioration while strengthening the cohesion of the country, protecting market freedom while expanding opportunities, and protecting the future while applies a series of reforms that prevent the obsolescence of the Administration.

It is at these three points that the central forces – social democracy, liberals and conservatives of Western democracies – meet. The alternation in the exercise of power between these ideological currents tells the story of progress after World War II, and the ability to understand each other marks stable political functioning in neighboring nations.

This alternation is not a mere game of nuances. It is very tangible. The differences between the consequences of government being one political color or another can be, and often are, enormous.. But always, always, they are irreversible consequences, because neither social democrats nor conservatives ever get out of what we have indicated as transcendental.

It is impossible for a Social Democrat to agree with the government program that Feijóo will present. Surely you will think that it is insufficient in terms of equality, or in the salary issue, or unambitious regarding the territorial. Now, you will not be able to argue that the PP is located in the space of the systemic —democracy, market economy and reforms—. So far, all normal.

The novelty lies in the fact that for that same social democrat it is intellectually impossible to classify the government program that Sánchez could present as a social democrat.. You will be able to use very respectable sentimental reasons to support it, but, rationally, you will not be able to justify it, because the roadmap will be genetically anti-systemic.

With regard to the health of democracy, its vital signs, a social democratic government does not dry up any path of understanding with the other central party, it does not violate the mechanisms of separation of powers, it does not seek legal shortcuts, it does not legislate ad hominem, it does not colonize institutions, it does not use public money in propaganda, it does not submit its action to the whim of minorities, it does not accept or listen to anything that could remotely resemble an attempt to erode or destroy the constitutional architecture. With the addition of Sánchez, all this cannot go less, it can only go more.

Regarding the market economy, a social democratic government does not take measures that impoverish the middle classes, it does not endanger legal certainty, it does not attack or threaten businessmen —or workers such as truckers, whom it insulted—, it does not crush the self-employed, it does not trigger public debt, it does not break the principle of intergenerational solidarity, it does not promote patronage of populists through subsidies that turn off social elevators, it does not buy recipes from the communists, it does not break the principle of equality between citizens of the same country, that is, it does not allow a kid born in Cádiz to have fewer opportunities than another born in Donosti. With the addition of Sánchez, all this cannot go less, it can only go more.

Regarding the reforms, a social democratic government does not deny the evident need for consensus, condemning society to block major issues, it does not obscure transparency when it is easier to increase it, it does not use health as an electoral tool when the need to update national scale, it does not instrumentalize foreign policy as if it were a catwalk, it does not give 180 degree changes as in Morocco without giving explanations in Parliament, it does not make Spanish an dispensable subject in the classroom, it does not admit that there are zones — as it happens with sports— which seem mired in corruption, does not tolerate even the slightest shadow of doubt about the security forces or the intelligence organs of the country, does not divide feminism by naming dogmatics that make their management the greatest horror. With the addition of Sánchez, all this cannot go less, it can only go more.

As a minor result of the previous evidence, whoever wants that sum without blushing intellectually can describe himself as an independentista, a nationalist, a communist, a populist or a sanchista if he prefers.

But, if only out of respect for the cause and even out of honesty, he should not define himself as a social democrat.

And as a major, transcendental result, we Spaniards are faced with the possibility of one or two investitures and with the certainty that only one will be systemic. With its shortcomings, sure. But democracy, economy and reforms.

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.