There is already an investiture agreement. How to judge it? The first thing is that it is not ideal at all because it will not stop – on the contrary – the great polarization. And as Felipe González has just said, appropriate reforms – from the Constitution to regional financing – require a minimum consensus between the two major parties.
Nor should we fall for propaganda. Former President Zapatero cheers the pact with a great headline: “The PSOE and Junts have signed a great State pact.” It isn’t true. Nor is that of a right-wing newspaper: “Sánchez surrenders the State to Puigdemont.”
The truth is that after the last legislature and the results of 23J there was no ideal investiture. Only two alternatives. One, Feijóo’s, the most voted list, supported by Vox. Two, that of Sánchez together with a heteroclite constellation of parties. Feijóo tried and ended up with only 172 deputies. The alliance with Vox after the regional and municipal elections was a bad deal because it alienated the PNV, which had voted for Rajoy’s party. Sánchez’s pact was very contradictory and required swallowing many toads, but in the end he achieved it. And he has even added the center-right Canarian Coalition. Felipe González’s proposal, to go to new elections, ignores that politics is a ruthless struggle for power, prolonged uncertainty and did not guarantee a very different result. Recent surveys by ‘El País’, ‘El Mundo’ and the CIS indicate this.
A barter for the investiture
In the end realpolitik and parliamentary arithmetic have been imposed, which is a rule of democracy. Sánchez needed his allies from the last legislature and JxCat to be sworn in and Puigdemont He set the price of an amnesty, debatable, but for acts without blood crimes. That’s what you get. A stark barter for the investiture, not a legislative agreement because – as the pacts with JxCat and ERC indicate – that will depend on many things. No less a historic pact to resolve the Catalan conflict.
Could it be a step forward? Yes, because JxCat -ERC already did it in 2019- accepts to invest a president who signed 155 and the demands that go beyond the Constitution – for example, the referendum – have not been admitted by the PSOE and Puigdemont raises them within the framework of article 92 of the Constitution. Furthermore, Catalonia has deflated – partly due to the pardons – and the PSC has won the regional, municipal and legislative elections. But whether this pact advances normalization is just a gamble.
And in the rest of Spain there will be serious problems. Some points of the amnesty such as the so-called ‘lawfare’ -the law is not yet known- have instigated all judicial associations and may be unconstitutional. And other points will be difficult to apply. Furthermore, the cohesion of such a heteroclite majority will make governance difficult because What unites the partners is more the rejection of the PP with Vox than anything else. And an amnesty that could be convenient and positive if it had a broad consensus loses legitimacy if it is the result of necessity, will increase the schism between the PSOE and the PP and can cause the extreme polarization of the political class to be transferred to society. The violence in demonstrations before Ferraz it’s a warning. AND “Felipe, mason, defend your nation” it may not be an anecdote.
The amnesty of the investiture pact raises serious political and legal problems, but equating it to 23F or ETA terrorism, as the PP is doing, is a lack of responsibility
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Sánchez takes too many risks. Feijóo also when comparing a debatable investiture pact with 23F or ETA terrorism. Catalans and Basques who vote for independence are Spanish citizens with all rights. And their parties cannot be stigmatized. And the more people say “they have given us a dictatorship” (Isabel Díaz Ayuso), the more difficult it will be to separate yourself from those who, with violence, protest against the imaginary dictatorship.
Let’s not overdramatize. Without any PP-PSOE consensus for a long time, a harsh realpolitik has been imposed that can give good, mediocre… or even very bad results. The skepticism is justified by Zapatero himself, his great propagandist, when he says: “It is a great State pact in which the PP should be.” The problem is that it is not. And the former president must remember that the 2006 Statute, without the PP, was approved. Then it ended the way it ended.