Feijóo undergoes an impossible investiture

The president of the PP would only be inaugurated if his call to the PSOE bench to betray Sánchez and break voting discipline came to fruition.

After a show of force in the street, the popular Alberto Núñez Feijóo faces the investiture debate starting this Tuesday, a key exam of which, however, and except for enormous surprise, the result is already known, since it arrives without the support required to form an Executive.

He makes his debut as a speaker in Congress after having brought between 40,000 and 60,000 people to the streets this Sunday against the amnesty and two months after the setback at the polls, which yielded an insufficient victory to reach La Moncloa, for the need for two allies, Vox and PNV, which were and are incompatible with each other. It will also be the first investiture session in which the co-official languages ​​will be heard.

Proposed as a candidate by King Felipe VI, the leader of the PP has garnered 172 supports, adding to the PP the 33 votes of Vox and the two deputies of the Canarian Coalition (CC) and the Navarro People’s Union (UPN). He is four votes away from the absolute majority, located at 176, and in front of him he has more noes (179) than yeses.

Socialist voting discipline, key

As it is, and despite the insistent attempts to attract the PNV, the only turn of the script depends on the PSOE bench. The Popular Party has explicitly called on socialists opposed to Pedro Sánchez agreeing on an amnesty with the Catalan independence movement to break voting discipline.

This hypothetical scenario, which has led to accusations of transfuguismo and corruption for the PP, is however very complex and does not call for optimism within the PP, since in the Lower House there will be no vote on amnesty yes or no on Wednesday or Friday, but the election of Feijóo as president.

In any case, and regardless of the arithmetic result, Feijóo is risking it in Congress, after weeks of internal noise in the PP, due to an unexpected electoral result and when an uncertain future awaits him as leader of the opposition or candidate in an electoral repetition.

The challenge of convincing their own, the PP, which elevated Feijóo and gave him the aura of an indisputable figure, has been introspecting for two months analyzing what went wrong on July 23.

Among the most shared conclusions is the burden that the pacts with Vox represented, especially among women, the vote of pensioners, fearful of cuts, or the excess of demographic confidence.

Some also criticize the media management of Feijóo’s friendship with the drug trafficker Marcial Dorado, which the PSOE returned to public debate.

Behind him, Feijóo has four absolute majorities in Galicia and what he himself has defined as a “partial majority” in the general elections. However, neither that argument, nor the defense of the government with the most votes, nor the offer to govern for only two years to undertake state pacts, will serve to balance the numbers.

Defense of territorial integrity

Feijóo goes to the Lower House to present in detail his Government program, based on the document that he has delivered to politicians and social agents to reach a great agreement for equality and well-being. A text that includes six State pacts and above all an agreement to “Defend the territorial integrity of the Spanish nation enshrined in the Constitution.”

The plenary session of Congress begins at 12:00 p.m. with Feijóo’s intervention to defend his Government program and to request the confidence of the Chamber. The candidate has no time limit and can intervene as much as he wishes. Furthermore, throughout the days of the investiture debate he can also ask to speak whenever he wants.

Unless there is a surprise, it will not obtain an absolute majority in the first vote on Wednesday (the session will begin at 9:00 a.m.) so a new one will be held after 48 hours, on Friday. In this vote, the candidate will be sworn in as president if he obtains a simple majority, more votes in favor than against, which does not seem to happen either.

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