Four years ago, in an investiture that was also complicated, although much less than this one, and with decisive movements of judges at the last moment (one day before, on Friday, January 3, in the middle of Christmas break, the Central Electoral Board met in urgency to disqualify Quim Torra, then president), Pedro Sánchez began his speech in a very meaningful way: “Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Spain is not going to break up. The Constitution is not going to be broken. What is going to be broken here is the blockade of the progressive government democratically elected by the Spanish people.”
Almost four years later, the opposition to Sánchez’s investiture that comes after the presentation of the amnesty law for more than 300 people involved in the processes has worsened. The president and the deputies will arrive at the plenary session of Congress protected by 1,600 police officers, deployed to guarantee security in the streets surrounding the building in the face of the threat posed by ultra calls for protest. The leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, has filed a complaint against Sánchez in the Supreme Court to paralyze the investiture, something practically impossible. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo has tried to convince foreign correspondents in Spain that the amnesty will block investments in the country. And groups of judges have come to demonstrate against the pardon measure at the doors of their courts.
Faced with this atmosphere of growing tension, to which are added the daily protests in front of the PSOE headquarters, Pedro Sánchez, who has not spoken much in these months of negotiation, with the exception of his resounding speech in defense of the amnesty in the committee federal party, has prepared with his advisors a substantive political debate with several axes, ranging from the development of the measures agreed upon in the coalition, with a detailed explanation of the progressive economic project that he proposes to deploy in the next four years, to a balance of the fulfillment of your program.
But above all, according to Government sources, Sánchez is preparing a speech in response to this atmosphere of exceptionality that the opposition is trying to install with two strong ideas: one, the explanation of the pacts and therefore, the defense of the amnesty, in the line already pointed out in the federal committee. But above all, the president will claim the democratic normality that the investiture entails, strictly following article 99 of the Constitution, in the face of accusations of “dictatorship” from some sectors of the PP, and will offer something completely contradictory to the atmosphere that the opposition wants to generate. : political stability. Sánchez and his team are convinced that the term will be long, as the previous one was.
In 2020, no one would have bet on the resistance of an unprecedented coalition and a president who was elected by only two votes with the deputy from Teruel Exist protected by the police to face the harassment he suffered for supporting Sánchez. Now, again, there are many bets on the instability of a Government that needs almost all the votes of the eight groups that will support it every week: PSOE, Sumar, ERC, Junts, PNV, Bildu, BNG and CC. But Sánchez will explain in his speech that he has managed, after years of instability, to almost finish his previous term – he brought forward the elections a few months – and he will manage to do so with this one, because the agreement that has been forged is solid and will imply the approval of the Budgets as soon as the Government starts rolling. That idea, that of political stability, is precisely one of Sánchez’s most valued ideas in the international economic and political world, as can easily be seen in his trips, especially to the Davos Forum (Switzerland), the heart of capitalism. international. And in the face of an environment of enormous political and social tension, Sánchez wants to reclaim that stability, which he believes is undervalued, and he is convinced that he can extend it for four more years. In La Moncloa they demand the stability and social peace that has been experienced in recent years, in the face of the tensions experienced, for example, in France with the pension reform.
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From a democratic point of view, in the face of criticism of “electoral fraud” from the PP or “illegitimate government” from Vox, Sánchez will demand the support of 12.6 million voters belonging to eight parties for his inauguration. It will be the investiture with the highest number of votes at the polls since that of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2004 (13.5 million). The group that supports Sánchez has 1.3 million more votes than the PP, Vox and UPN bloc, while the Canarian Coalition, which supported Feijóo, will now support the socialist leader. Sánchez will take care of his partners and, unlike the president of the PP, who in his frustrated attempt at the head of the Government came to reply in the same turn, without making distinctions, to the PNV and EH Bildu, and he did the same with ERC and Junts , the socialist candidate will give individualized treatment to each parliamentary group as a sign of recognition, according to Executive sources. And he will also explain in detail the agreements reached with each of them as a way of committing and seeking his vote.
But the most delicate moment will come when talking about amnesty. He will do it in the first speech, the one used in a debate like this to explain the political project, but above all he will have to do it in the afternoon, when the opposition will rush against him over this issue. Sánchez has prepared a speech to try to convince millions of citizens who have many doubts about the grace measure. It will be very difficult for it to achieve this in conservative sectors that have always opposed it even without seeing the law, but in La Moncloa they trust that some temperate and progressive sectors that reject the idea will be able to hear from the president an explanation of the political usefulness of such a measure. to rebuild coexistence in Catalonia and close the wound of processes. Now, with the law on the table, this speech will be clearer. However, Sánchez will not deny that he has taken this step to have a Government, as he admitted in the federal committee, with the idea of “making necessity a virtue.” The socialist leader is still awaiting the votes of his pro-independence allies, so he will have to balance when explaining the agreements with them and the amnesty itself.
But Sánchez does not want the grace measure to monopolize the debate, which is what the opposition will try. For this reason, he will outline what he will have in return, four years of a progressive Government with the intention of consolidating the economic and social transformation begun in the previous legislature. The central elements are in the government agreement with Sumar, but the candidate will develop others, although no major announcements are planned. Sánchez wants a completely different speech from Feijóo’s in his failed inauguration in September, where he dedicated himself much more to attacking the acting president than to presenting his proposals. He will reproach the PP, and above all he will try to place it isolated with Vox, much more in the replicas, but the initial idea is to offer a complete political project with a capital role for the economy.
Economic bet
Spain continues to be one of the EU countries that is growing the most and has the lowest inflation, and is breaking employment records (more than 21 million workers) despite the global slowdown. Sánchez remains convinced that it can be the “full employment” legislature, which for him would mean lowering unemployment figures to 8% (now it is less than 12%). All this while maintaining commitments such as the revaluation of pensions in accordance with the CPI or the increase in the minimum wage until it reaches 60% of the average wage. The industrial transformation and the decisive commitment to renewable energies driven by adaptation to climate change will be another of the axes of Sánchez’s speech, which with its ecological ideology has turned the PSOE into an exception within the social democratic family, by not having the competition of a green party at the expense of its voters.
The acting minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, highlighted on Tuesday that the roadmap for the next four years “is already supported by the five years [de Sánchez] at the head of the Government of Spain.” The spokesperson gave clues as to where the socialist leader’s intervention will go: “If one rereads the President of the Government’s investiture speech four years ago, what one can find in it is that what he said then, without knowing that he would encounter a crisis as a result of a pandemic or a war in Europe that have influenced our economy, has come to pass. The direction and direction that the President of the Government then set was the transformation of Spain towards a more sustainable model from an energy point of view, a digital transformation, an improvement in labor rights, social rights, the recovery of cuts, and all of that has been accomplished.”
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