Governing is not easy

From what the media tells every day, especially those on the right – which are not few – and those who only know about scandals – which are many – it would seem that the Spanish political situation is on the verge of an explosion. Going one step beyond these headlines, we see, however, that things are more or less the same as a year ago: that the opposition shouts, gestures, threatens, exaggerates, distorts and lies, but fails to change its subsidiary situation one bit. . While the Government, besieged on different fronts, particularly the judicial one, remains in its place and nothing, except all kinds of speculations, almost always self-interested, suggests that it will leave it before the term of the legislature is up.

The reviled CIS barometer has just concluded that the media gibberish that overwhelms us does not modify the electoral prospects. He continues to place the PSOE in the lead and sees the PP vote stagnant; Vox improves somewhat and Sumar remains at 7%. Some private polls come to say the same thing, only giving a slight advantage to the popular ones over the socialists. In short, noise does not alter the attitudes of the large masses of voters. It cannot be ruled out that a good part of them have no interest in the political information highlighted by the media.

What is worth asking is who will lose if the fight between the Government and the opposition continues for a long time, until the elections, along the same lines as until now. That is to say, whether the many offensives that are being waged against the Government – all of them, it seems, with the same origin and purpose – will end up weakening the left to the point of making it lose the elections without palliatives. Or if so much overacting on the part of the right will end up boring a significant part of those who reject the left or will make others in that world conclude that the PP has no more political ideas than to vilify its opponent.

There will be time to discover which of these effects ends up occurring. Because everything indicates that, even overcoming the many difficulties that already face him and those that will surely oppose him later, Pedro Sánchez will continue to govern. Even, he assures and it seems very likely, if he does not get Congress to approve the next budgets. Although that remains to be seen if it will happen or not.

Contrary to first appearances and the biased information that harasses us, the judicial front is going to become quite clear to the president in the short and medium term future. Not the one that has to do with José Luis Ábalos and Koldo García against whom there seems to be quite solid evidence of crime. But yes, unless an unforeseen change of scenario occurs, to the direct or indirect implications of members of the Government in the corruption plot denounced by Víctor de Aldama within the framework of that scandal. Privately, even personalities close to the PP recognize that it is increasingly difficult to believe Aldama and in socialist circles they wonder how it is possible that the judge investigating the hydrocarbon fraud has granted provisional freedom to such an unrecommended individual.

Among the most trustworthy journalists, the idea is spreading, born from legal sources, that it will not be long until Judge Peinado is forced to dismiss the case against Begoña Gómez, although with such an atrabiliary magistrate and such a debatable background. like that you never know. And the same is said about the investigation of which the president’s brother is a victim. It is more difficult to make predictions in the case opened against the State Attorney General. Because, although the evidence against him is weakening, what is at stake is the political intention of the judicial right, at the highest level, to unequivocally remove any exponent of the left from those instances and experience says that for She is willing to do anything.

In any case, this matter is going on for a long time and the Government has no intention of withdrawing its support for the attorney general. That indirectly he has just received the support that the new president of the General Council of the Judiciary has managed to approve a substantial change in the procedure: that in the future it will be precisely the prosecutors and not the judges who investigate the cases. Something that many professionals have been demanding for decades, that occurs in almost all of Europe and that if it were in force would have prevented Judge Juan Carlos Peinado, for example, from bringing Begoña Gómez into harm’s way.

In the strictly political field, Pedro Sánchez also has serious problems. Not so much because it lost the parliamentary vote on the tax on energy companies thanks to the fact that Junts and the PNV have voted alongside the PP. That this rejection had been planned for weeks and that tax is not a fundamental piece of the PSOE fiscal program, but rather a concession to Sumar. But because Junts and Carles Puigdemont are embarked on an offensive that seeks to regain prominence against an Esquerra in difficulties and can put the Government in various problems in future parliamentary votes, beyond the fact that they can force a motion of confidence.

It does not seem that the PNV is going to be so problematic and the tax on electricity companies should be an exception. Nor is it expected that the scuffle between Yolanda Díaz and the Minister of Economy Carlos Corpus over the deadlines for the reduction of the working day will end in an open confrontation. It is assumed that a compromise solution will be found and it is worth remembering that one of the obviously interested priorities of Pedro Sánchez is for the leader of Sumar and her party to get out of the slump they have been in for some months.

In other words, governing is difficult, but it is the least bad thing that can happen in politics. And what is really hard is being in the opposition.

#Governing #easy