Tag Archives: Negotiations

INTERNATIONAL

Tension Escalates on Migrant Ship in Mauritania Port Amidst Firing and Negotiations

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Civil Guard agents have fired into the air to try to contain the growing tension on the Rio Tajo ship, which anchors in the port of Nouadhibou, in Mauritania, with 168 migrants on board.

According to sources from the Civil Guard, the Spanish rescue patrol boat has been with these migrants on board for two days (August 24), awaiting authorization to disembark in Mauritania or to proceed with the transfer to the Canary Islands. .

These sources add that the situation of tension has increased with the passing of the hours, which is why it has been decided to reinforce the number of agents on the Civil Guard ship, mobilizing troops assigned to the Nouadhibou detachment.

In the last few hours, moreover, the agents guarding the 168 migrants have fired into the air twice to try to quell possible attempts at riots.

AUGC, the professional association of the Civil Guard, has also collected information on the situation to denounce the “painful conditions” suffered by agents and migrants, which they attribute to the lack of cooperation from Mauritania, according to sources from this organization.

In its account on the X social network, AUGC added this Saturday afternoon that there are currently unsuccessful negotiations between the European agency Frontex and the Mauritanian authorities.

SPAIN

Political Maneuvering and Negotiations Surrounding Feijóo’s Government Formation Efforts

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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.

SPAIN

Spain’s Political Landscape Tense Ahead of Investiture Decision

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Felipe VI’s consultations with the different political forces are advancing, but some do not want to show all their cards and others admit they are unable to clear up the question of whether or not there will be an investiture session next week.

Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo will attend the round of meetings at Zarzuela this Tuesday without having guaranteed the necessary support, after a month of discreet conversations and a contact that resulted in the formation of a Board controlled by the majority of the parties that support the government in office.

Feijóo maintains his willingness to submit to the vote despite the weak situation in which he finds himself and with the support of Vox now in doubt. Sánchez, for his part, threatens to leave him free to delve into the wear and tear of another parliamentary defeat. But it is the King who has the ball in his court. You have three options: propose Sánchez, Feijóo… or delay the decision. The PNV points out that the round of contacts will not serve to designate a solid candidate.

UPN and the Canarian Coalition have shielded their support for Feijóo, but he would not even get out of the siding by adding Vox. In this scenario, other parties consulted by El Confidencial are already agitating the scenario of a second round of consultations, which would give the leader of the PP and, above all, Sánchez, more time to try to tie up the support they need.

They require an absolute majority in the first vote, more yes than no 48 hours later. And, of the four parties that have excluded themselves from the talks with the monarch, Junts per Catalunya is the great unknown. Puigdemont continues to hold the key for the coalition to remain in Moncloa.

On Monday, the acting second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, criticized that these formations have “declined” to go to consultations to “explain” their positions. The leader of Sumar was very careful not to venture what Felipe VI will do, after his interview with the monarch, but he also made it clear that there is only “one real possibility” of obtaining the majority: that of the block of which he is a part.

For their part, acting Executive sources acknowledge that, although the negotiation is expected to be difficult, Junts has taken “very important steps”, not only with its support in the voting of the Table. They also point out that the position that Vox adopts this Tuesday, after his appointment with Felipe VI, will be decisive in clarifying whether the King will designate Feijóo as a candidate.

If it has 172 endorsements, they say, it would make some sense that it wanted to make them visible. Although they are not enough to make him president. The PSOE, as it did since the general elections of 23-J, steps on the brake.

This Monday, the acting Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, demanded to give the King “time” to decide on the candidate, almost in parallel to the fact that his party communicated to Feijóo that it will not make efforts to prevent him from running for a “fake investiture “.

On the one hand, the Socialists charged against the Popular Party for pressing the monarch “daily” to propose Feijóo and, on the other, they gloated that the conservative leader attended an investiture without having his support tied up, assuming that will crash against the parliamentary majority.

Sánchez’s little haste collides with Feijóo’s accelerated roadmap. Despite the doubts that important party leaders express in private, the PP leader will ask the King to propose him as a candidate to go to an investiture session, even with the almost certainty that it will end in failure.

Some barons of the PP support the decision of the leadership, understanding that Feijóo must reverse the feeling of defeat that has settled in the ranks of the popular and fight as the “winner of the elections”.

Despite the more than possible failure, the party leadership reiterates that starring in an investiture would allow Feijóo to present “a model of the country”. A session with campaign overtones before a possible scenario of a return to the polls in December.

In the PP there are other voices that warn, however, that exposing themselves to another parliamentary defeat after the “ridicule” of the Congress Table would be “suicide” for Feijóo.

The same sources urge the popular leader to “assume reality” and prepare for a “tough” opposition to Sánchez to bring down a government as soon as possible that, if consummated, would be mired in “instability”.. “We lack a logical and solid parliamentary majority to govern,” say critics of Feijóo’s strategy.

As El Confidencial announced, the PP leader’s plan goes from the outset to achieve the King’s order to force an investiture in the last week of August. If, as everything indicates, it is unsuccessful -Feijóo needs an absolute majority-, a period of two months would automatically open to light a government majority.

In the event that no vote has prospered within that period, the Cortes would be dissolved and elections would be held at the end of the year, with the horizon set at December 17. PP parliamentary sources confirm that if they receive the green light in the Zarzuela, the session could be set for next week, on August 30 or 31.

In this case, it would be the new president of Congress, Francina Armengol, who must give the final go-ahead to Feijóo’s calendar. But the popular do not believe that the socialist leader put obstacles. “The more time passes, the more expensive Junts and ERC can make their support”, they trust.

In Ferraz, in fact, they confirmed this Monday that they will let Feijóo walk towards his “third setback” if he is chosen by the King. “We are not going to elbow each other,” added socialist sources.

Genoa insists that Feijóo will arrive at the meeting with the King with more support than Sánchez has, since he does not yet have the explicit support of the PNV, Junts or ERC. But the game could be more complicated for Feijóo due to the break with Vox.

Santiago Abascal will be the first of the leaders who will meet with Felipe VI this Tuesday, and the party has not yet confirmed whether it will convey to the monarch that its 33 deputies will support Feijóo if he is proposed or, on the contrary, avoid compromising that support.

At this time, Feijóo has 139 tied votes. Only with Sumar, Sánchez adds 152. If this scenario is confirmed, the option that Felipe VI chooses to delay the decision and repeat the round of consultations later would win integers.

Vox has made its support for Feijóo conditional on him “picking up the phone” and clarifying whether he “opts for the Murcia or Valencia route” in his relationship with Abascal. The ultra party has not forgiven the PP for leaving it out of the Congress Table, and demands “urgent explanations” before clarifying the meaning of its vote.

“If Feijóo wants to raise a sanitary cordon for Vox, he will not have our support,” warn sources close to Abascal. So far, Genoa has not given in to pressure and there have been no contacts between the two directions. They trust, however, that Abascal “keeps his word” and does not get out of the equation at a key moment.