Feijóo flees forward after his first defeat in Congress

The deputies of the PP Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Cuca Gamarra in the chamber of the Congress of Deputies to attend the voting of the table and the observance of the Constitution. EFE/Juan Carlos HidalgoJuan Carlos Hidalgo (EFE)

On Thursday afternoon, after the constitution of the Cortes, in Genoa there was bustle. Alberto Núñez Feijóo analyzed at the PP headquarters the setback that morning in the vote of the Congress Table, which the left won, with his cabinet and some members of the popular leadership. “They were aware that things had not gone well. Feijóo was very surprised with Vox’s reaction of not voting in favor of Cuca Gamarra for the Presidency of Congress,” says a leader familiar with the analysis that was made, who stresses that no self-criticism emerged from that internal conclave. The PP leader has explained to some supporters that he did not know that Vox would not vote for Gamarra until the voting began. “It was an unpleasant surprise, it was probably not calculated correctly that Vox was not going to support us, and our chances of an investiture have been undermined,” analyzes a regional president of the PP. In politics sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And Feijóo begins the investiture game with a first defeat.

The vote revealed the loneliness of the PP leader, who after the disagreement with the extreme right, was left with the scant company of a UPN deputy and another from the Canary Islands Coalition supporting Gamarra. In total, 139 votes, far from the 176 of the absolute majority and the 172 that it added including Vox. Despite this, in Genoa it has been decided to continue with the plan as if nothing had happened. The image of that parliamentary isolation of the PP leader punctured the bubble that he could achieve an investiture, but Feijóo has fled forward at least until the King decides on the assignment, oblivious to the internal voices that are beginning to question the strategy of the.

Since the bitter victory of July 23, nothing seems to be going right in the popular headquarters. The fiasco of the Table of Congress would not be so relevant if it did not come to put lead in the wings of the spirit of the conservative party, which is still trying to digest the result of the polls. Thursday’s vote acted as a “reality check”, say some popular leaders, because it has made it clear that the important thing is not to win the elections, as the PP leadership defends, but that arithmetic, in a parliamentary system, is the what commands Its status as the most voted list to achieve the presidency of the Lower House was of no use to the PP, because on the other side a wall of 178 votes (two more than the absolute majority) was erected to elect the socialist Francina Armengol. The striking thing about what happened on Thursday is that it was the PP itself that punctured that balloon.

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Feijóo decided not to give Vox any of the four positions on the Board to which the PP aspired. And in doing so, he broke the bloc with the extreme right and his inauguration options were mortally wounded. Why did you make that decision?

Nobody fully understands it in the PP. The direct team of the leader explains that he was thought above all in the battle of the Table, in isolation. And that once it became known that there were no options to get the presidency of Congress, it made no sense to give Vox a seat on the Table, despite the fact that it could have been a gesture of loyalty to a party with which it shares four governments. autonomous. “The maximum booty was the presidency of Congress. If you can’t get it, the game that was fought was to get four places on the table or three. And the story that we are the same as Vox was at stake. If we had voted together we would not have had any argument for other parties to support us in an investiture ”, they argue in Feijóo’s environment. The problem is that a break in the right distanced his options from receiving the King’s commission to apply for an investiture, because it reduced his support. “Feijóo was not on that stage because he thought that Vox’s support was not at risk. The strategy is up to him. He is not in favor of making assignments to Vox. He lives permanently pending this issue ”, analyzes a leader close to the leader.

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Feijóo has also explained to some barons that he left Vox out of the equation because he wanted to try to get the PNV to support his candidate for the Presidency of Congress. For that, he needed to leave the extreme right out of the Table, because the Basque party is incompatible with Vox. However, that move did not work out for him either, because the PNV voted in favor of the socialist Francina Armengol, while peneuvista sources insist that “there is nothing new” regarding his slamming the door of the PP to negotiate an investiture.

The barons believe that Feijóo also weighed up the political fight with Vox before the new cycle. “What has happened proves two things,” says an autonomous president of the PP. “The first, that the voice of Vox is going to be cut off as much as possible. They can no longer put resources to the Constitutional Court, because they have less than 50 deputies, and they will not be on the Table. The second, that Feijóo has assumed that he is going to the opposition or to elections. In either case, he needs to distance himself from Vox.”

The PP is now pending Felipe VI, who must decide whether to entrust Sánchez or Feijóo with the investiture. Everything depends on whether the leader of the PSOE can bring tied to his meeting with the King the 178 supports that he obtained for the presidency of Congress. If not, the PP believes that Felipe VI should commission Feijóo. The King “knows that Sánchez lost the elections,” said the deputy secretary Javier Maroto this Friday, in what even sounded like pressure on the monarch.

If Felipe VI decides that Sánchez is the candidate, Feijóo will run out of dilemmas. But if he entrusts it to him, the internal debate on whether or not he should go to a failed investiture will revive in the PP. “The precedent of the Table complicates his possibilities a lot, but Feijóo has the right to stage his victory in the elections in an investiture,” considers a veteran, who summarizes the majority opinion in the PP. However, a current is making its way in the party that considers that another parliamentary defeat must be avoided. In the direct team of the leader they open the door to back down if it is verified that Sánchez has the support of Junts for his investiture. Feijóo will weigh his steps well.

The error of the leader of the PP in the first game of the investiture has awakened internal noise. The management has cut off the possibility of holding a congress to reinforce Feijóo’s leadership, while in the territories the focus is on his team, which he will have to remodel in the coming weeks. You will be prompted for changes. In principle, the noise will not reach more. “In the big parties there is always a tidal wave, but no one is going to question Feijóo, he has only been around a year and a half and has won some generals,” says one of the main regional presidents. Faced with his first defeat, the Galician politician moves on without looking back.

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