During half a parliamentary session on Wednesday it seemed that the Government would not be able to pass any of the three first and relevant decree laws of the legislature. Not because of the vote against the right (PP and Vox), but because of the ‘desertion’ of the seven deputies of JxCat and also the five of Can in unemployment benefits.
The defeat of these three decrees – despite having offered to process them as bills in order to introduce amendments – would have confirmed that the Government does not have a parliamentary majority to govern. There was a comfortable majority for the investiture of 179 deputies (higher than in 2020), but it was only to invest Sanchez and that he would not govern Feijóo with the support of Vox. There was not – on the contrary – a rocky Frankenstein majority, like that of the last legislature, to govern. That is why JxCat was going to vote against the three relevant decrees and Podemos against the unemployment one.
Puigdemont He wanted to make visible that Sánchez could not do anything without agreeing everything first with Waterloo. Like a powerful ‘de facto’ vice president, but without obligations? As the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, had said, when at the time of the replacement of Nadia Calvino claimed that the true vice president of the Government was Puigdemont? Can Sánchez swallow this bizarre status that would also irritate Yolanda Díaz, Oriol Junqueras, the PNV…? And Podemos was even clearer. For Pablo Iglesias The priority is the crusade against Yolanda Díaz, whom – when he resigned from the Government – he elevated to the altars as Sánchez’s vice president, but who later not only did not turn out to be submissive, but also set up Sumar, a platform against Podemos. Iglesias seeks to eliminate Yolanda Díaz as she did before with Irene Montero.
The rejection by Congress of the decree on unemployment benefits is a hard defeat for Díaz and confirms that the majority of the investiture is not a majority of the Government
But Sánchez and Puigdemont did a double somersault at the end. Enemies and accomplices at the same time. JxCat did not participate in the vote – in exchange for immigration powers for Catalonia – and thus the Government was able to approve the omnibus decree (the legal one) by 172 (all those in the investiture except those of JxCat) against 171 and which also entails receiving 10,000 million euros of Brussels funds. And the same thing happened in a second vote (in the first one a Sumar deputy was wrong) in the decree of economic measures (VAT, electricity price, transportation vouchers, pensions). On the contrary, the unemployment benefit was rejected by 176 votes against (PP, Vox and Podemos) against 171. A tough defeat for Yolanda Díaz.
At the end of the surreal and agonizing session in which Junts changed positions through the art of bartering, it is not clear if Sánchez was left half dead or half alive. It has been confirmed that there is no majority or Frankenstein to govern with a certain stability (neither Junts nor Podemos are there), but two of the three relevant decrees have been saved and it has been clear that, at least for the moment, Junts does not want to kill to Sanchez. He prefers to make him dizzy, humiliate him and… ‘peix al cove’.
Sánchez is not yet a headless chicken, although it is worth remembering that in 1945 Lloyd Olsen, an American farmer, survived 18 months without it, but yesterday he did receive a solemn ‘sopapo cum laude’. The president who a month ago wanted to erect a wall against “the right united with the extreme right” He had to make Bolaños implore the support of the PP, he was on the verge of losing three votes, saved two, and came out with his head, but quite bruised.
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And all when the legislature has just started. What will happen to the Budgets when Puigdemont wants to boss around and show off more than ERC despite having the same number of seats? Furthermore, the Government does not learn. Bolaños is a master in the agonizing negotiation of the last second. Just that, which is not little. And neither Sánchez nor Yolanda Díaz assume that the pact on the minimum wage was the only bridge they could have left with the business community. In the last legislature, the labor reform was agreed with the CEOE despite the opposition of the PP.
The Government does not understand that Spain cannot be governed with a minimum order with the support of the entire left (well, without Junts, left?, and without Podemos) but against the entire political and economic right. Half dead or half alive? Two things at a time.