Pedro Sanchez He was convinced this Wednesday that he will be invested again. “There will be a socialist government & rdquor ;, he said during his speech before the deputies and senators of his party. In public, both the acting head of the Executive and the ministers and officials of the PSOE convey optimism: they believe that Together for Catalonia will support Sánchez’s candidacy when there is an investiture debate (at the moment it does not have a date) and there will be no electoral repetition. In private, on the other hand, they do not take it much less for granted. But everyone anticipates that the momentous vote this Thursday in Congress will go according to the plan designed by the acting head of the Executive.
The Lower House will be constituted at 10 in the morning, during a plenary session in which its new president (the PSOE candidate is Francina Armengol; that of the PP, Cuca Gamarra) and the members of the Bureau. The vote will last several hours and has a convoluted procedure, but if it does not end with the appointment of Armengol and with a progressive majority in the governing body of Congress, the Socialists assume that the investiture of Sánchez will be impossible and there will be a new electoral call, since the options of Alberto Núñez Feijóo they are null as the PP and Vox are far from the absolute majority.
Everything in Congress goes through the Board, which is its governing body and is essential for control the times of parliamentary processing and the proposals submitted for debate. Without a progressive majority there, and coupled with PP control of the Senate, the legislature would be doomed to fail, because the Table would boycott the initiatives of the Government.
The two paths of the PSOE
But that is not the scenario contemplated by the PSOE. “Our proposal is going to go ahead & rdquor ;, explains a minister who is aware of the negotiations with Junts. The progressive majority of the Table (five positions for the leftist forces and four for the PP and Vox) will be possible, continues this member of the Government, thanks to the post-convergents. Right now both blocks are equal in number of seats. The PSOE, Sumar and their partners during the last legislature (from the ERC to the PNV, through EH Bildu and the BNG) have 171 votes. The PP, Vox and UPN, exactly the same. But the Socialists have two ways to break the tie, gain control of the Table and appoint Armengol, a former Balearic president, a leader who has traditionally maintained good relations with the Catalan independence movement as the new president of Congress.
On the one hand, that all or some of the seven deputies from the party of Carlos Puigdemont support their candidacies for the Bureau. On the other, if the Catalan separatists do not take the step, everything would depend on the only deputy from Canarian Coalition, a party that governs the archipelago with the PP, but is silent.
The Socialists believe that the Canarian party will end up supporting the PP, so all eyes are on Junts, which for now not willing to make things easy to the leader of the PSOE. The neoconvergents will not decide their vote for the presidency of Congress and the Table until this very Thursday, moments before the vote, when they have summoned their executive. Puigdemont himself wrote a tweet this Wednesday morning in which he made it clear that it is he who is leading the negotiation. “Needed verifiable facts before committing any votes. And it doesn’t matter if we talk about agreements for the Bureau or more far-reaching agreements, such as the investiture,” warned the ‘former president’ of the Generalitat.
The cardinal points of our position have not varied, due to more pressures and corredisses of darrera hour than I did, and some insult that gets out of control. It is to say: do not have confidence in the Spanish political parties, total caution is little and promises do not escalfen nor…
— krls.eth / Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) August 16, 2023
Even so, in the PSOE they show optimists: they believe that the post-convergents will allow there to be a progressive majority in the Table. “Life depends on that if they want to have parliamentary group own”, explains a Socialist deputy. Neither Junts nor ERC, which also won seven deputies on July 23, meet the conditions for not ending up in the mixed group, a fate that implies fewer resources and less leadership. The Socialists have already conveyed that they are in favor of making a flexible interpretation of the Congress regulations to allow both pro-independence formations to have their own group, but the gesture will only be possible if the right does not have a majority at the Table.
Other sources of the socialist leadership offer a additional argument for Junts to support: Puigdemont needs “gain time”, so it is in your best interest to facilitate the vote in Congress and then get very “harder” when it is necessary to negotiate the investiture.
Result in the air
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It all depends on what happens this Thursday. The socialists have prevailed “absolute discretion” on the negotiation, led by the ministers Maria Jesus Montero and Felix Bolanos, but sources from the party leadership point out that for the moment the talks with Junts have focused on the vote this Thursday, leaving the more complicated piece.
“We started,” said Sánchez at the end of his speech this Wednesday, which was public. Shortly after, already behind closed doors, patxi lopez He took the word. According to several leaders present at the meeting, the intervention of the socialist spokesman in Congress did not show no doubt: He spoke as if the investiture of Sánchez was guaranteed and the processing of laws was going to start with normal. But right now everything is up in the air. This Thursday the re-election of the PSOE leader as Prime Minister will undergo a first test, but by no means will it be the definitive one.