Feijóo rehearses a disjointed ‘catch-all’ strategy for his investiture

The leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, after a press conference after the meeting with the acting president of the Government and general secretary of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez, this Wednesday in Congress.MARISCAL (EFE)

All avenues are open to achieve an investiture, even if they are incompatible or incoherent with each other. Alberto Núñez Feijóo has been in that strategy since he received the order from the King on August 23, because, as the PP leadership insists, different formulas must be explored since he is only “four votes away” from being inaugurated as president. The support it already has from Vox, UPN and the Canarian Coalition places it at 172 seats, four away from the absolute majority, but time passes – the investiture session will be on September 26 and 27 – without any visualize water in the pool in any of the other options. This Wednesday, Feijóo played a card that would appear in any script, that of asking the other major party, the PSOE, to allow him to govern, but in his argument he revealed the seams of that catch-all strategy: while proposing a great national pact to the PSOE , an agreement between “constitutionalist parties” to politically isolate the independence movement and reduce power from the nationalists, his greatest hope that his investiture will prosper is placed on attracting the PNV, and he does not give up playing the Junts per Catalunya card.

After the meeting he held yesterday with Pedro Sánchez, in which he offered him a pact to let him govern in exchange for a short term, of only two years, and the signing of six State agreements, Feijóo explained that the “historic obligation “At this time, for any politician, it is “protecting the State” from the demands that the independence movement is raising, which in their opinion “are unconstitutional”, in reference to the amnesty law and the self-determination referendum. In his story, Feijóo considered that the “constitutionalist forces”, which now include the PSOE, Sumar and Vox and which “have obtained 94% of the vote”, are obliged to reach an agreement against the independentists, who They only add up to 6%. “It is incomprehensible that 6% can condition the governability of the 94% and decide State policies,” he complained.

Despite this, at the same time that it formulates this speech against the independentists conditioning the Government of Spain, the PP does not want to throw in the towel with the PNV, which also defends the independence of Euskadi – although it has not promoted a unilateral challenge. to the State, contrary to what happened with the process in Catalonia—and intends to sit down with the secessionists of Junts per Catalunya.

The popular ones have explained their decision to speak with Junts, the most delicate. “It is a parliamentary group that, like ERC, beyond the actions that four people, five, ten, whoever they were, carried out, represent a party whose tradition and legality is not in doubt,” he said days ago. Deputy Secretary Esteban González Pons. Feijóo himself, in an interview in El Mundo, maintained that Junts “is not his political and ideological rival” and advanced that he will offer him, “within respect for the Constitution, to listen to what his demands and proposals are.” The Socialists also frame their dialogue with Junts within the limits of the Constitution, although Feijóo has been categorical in ruling out the possibility of an amnesty law, which the PSOE always rejected and is now studying.

Feijóo therefore proposes to the PSOE a great agreement so that the independentists do not have the key to the governability of Spain, while he does not give up exploring the path of these parties. This strategic and discursive incoherence is causing internal and external tensions, with his party in Catalonia and with other sectors of the political and media right. This Tuesday, the Abc newspaper published a very critical editorial about the PP’s openness to establishing a negotiating dialogue with Junts, titled “An incomprehensible movement.”

In the move for his investiture, Feijóo also intends to include the PNV and Vox in the same equation. Although Santiago Abascal’s party has offered him free votes, the PP leader would need his support during his term to approve any bill. This is how the lehendakari Íñigo Urkullu reminded him on Tuesday: Vox, he said, conditions “yes or yes” the PP policy and the principles of that party “radically clash” with those of the PNV. The lehendakari had a telephone conversation with Feijóo this Wednesday afternoon in which he referred him to his party for issues related to his investiture.

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Feijóo’s exercise of the catch-all strategy is also out of tune on Vox’s side. The extreme right was silent this Wednesday before the offer of the leader of the PP to the PSOE to sign six State pacts, but the question that remained in the air is whether the ultras could keep their votes for Feijóo for free in the event that he agreed something with the PSOE. The same in the event that the PP were to reach an agreement with the PNV, a party that Vox has asked to make illegal.

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