Once again, the political situation in Venezuela has been the subject of a debate in the Spanish Parliament. This time, on Wednesday, a second motion was passed in the Senate urging “the Government to recognise Edmundo González Urrutia as the new president” of the country after the elections on 28 July. The initiative, promoted by the Popular Party – with an absolute majority in the Upper House – replicates the one already ratified in Congress a week ago, also promoted by the PP and which was approved with the support of the PNV. But Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s party has gone a step further from its stronghold in the Senate by also demanding that Pedro Sánchez’s Executive promote before the International Criminal Court an arrest warrant against Nicolás Maduro and other “suspects” of crimes against humanity and “adopt measures supporting the transfer of powers” from Maduro to the opposition candidate Edmundo González, to whom Spain has granted political asylum. The proposal, which has no effective value, received votes in favour from the PP, Vox, UPN and Junts, but not this time from the Basque group, which did not participate in the vote.
The motion focused on international politics, however, has served as a barometer to gauge the state of relations between the PNV and the PP; and the PNV and the Government, after the Basque Nationalist Party supported the Popular Party in Congress last Wednesday, although later guaranteeing its support for the investiture of Sánchez’s Executive. “We would like, following the example of unity of the Platform opposed to Maduro, to also dialogue here and try to reach consensus on initiatives avoiding partisanship,” Senator Luke Uribe-Etxebarria justified before distancing himself from the Popular Party in this second vote.
On the other hand, Junts has once again veered in the opposite direction of the coalition government with its position in favour of the PP motion, after being absent from the vote in the plenary session of Congress last week under the excuse that they had to attend events to celebrate the Diada. “Venezuela is a dictatorship in every sense of the word,” Senator Eduard Pujol has claimed. A move made one day after knocking out the government with its vote against, and therefore surprisingly knocking down, at the last minute, the consideration of the bill to put limits on temporary rentals promoted by Sumar.
—Pedro Sánchez’s government has decided to collaborate with a dictatorship. If others said ‘silver or lead’, he says ‘gold or lead’ — said the popular senator José Antonio Monago in his first intervention in defence of the motion, thus comparing the president of the government with the Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar. The popular party has reiterated, both in the hemicycle this Wednesday and in its offensive against the Executive on account of Venezuela, that the refusal of La Moncloa to recognise González as legitimate president is due to the economic interests of the former president of the government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of the Latin American country.
—In Spain, the whole country is clear about what Zapatero’s role is: whitewashing a dictatorship! —another PP senator, Íñigo Fernández, then alluded from the podium to the former socialist president, causing one of the most tense moments of the plenary session. The PSOE bench stirred and its deputy spokesman, Alfonso Gil, asked to speak to ask the president of the Chamber to remove the reference to Zapatero from the minutes.
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—If every time Rajoy or Aznar were mentioned they were removed from the minutes, there would be no minutes of the plenary session—, replied the vice president of the Senate and acting president at that time, Javier Maroto, who thus ironically denied the claim of a socialist senator. The PSOE appealed to the political asylum given to González as a symbol of its commitment to Venezuelans and to the position of the EU, which for now has not recognized the opposition candidate as president despite suspicions of electoral fraud.
For his part, the socialist senator Rafael Lemus brought up during his speech the trip of the PP delegation that landed in Caracas for the electoral meeting and was returned to Spain by order of the Maduro Government: “They went to Venezuela without the permission of the Venezuelan authorities, they seemed more like a company of eviction as electoral observers.”
And Junts senator Eduard Pujol said in his turn: “PSOE and PP talk about Venezuela, but in reality they are discussing how to get to La Moncloa.” One of the unknowns of the day was precisely the position of the pro-independence party, which last week was absent from Congress during the vote with the justification that they had to attend the events celebrating the Diada.
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