Autumn has brought something similar to a perfect storm for the Government. In recent weeks, the problems of a legislature caught with tweezers in Congress have been compounded by an offensive by the PP in the courts, aggravated by the latest revelations of the ‘Koldo case’ that fully implicate former minister Ábalos. And this succession of bad news in the courts has become a kind of nightmare for the Executive from which it intends to escape by providing more content to Pedro Sánchez’s mandate. Specifically, with an acceleration of the General State Budgets and a push for social reforms in housing or pensions.
In recent weeks, in fact, negotiations between the PSOE and Junts have intensified in search of support that would return to the Government the parliamentary majority that it now lacks. With an eye on the General State Budgets, the Ministry of Finance is negotiating in a discreet and bilateral manner a new path of stability that will satisfy the Catalan independence supporters. Something similar to what has also been happening for weeks with a team from the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration of Elma Saiz regarding the delegation of migration management powers.
All the socialist sources consulted agree when it comes to placing caution in the expectations of an immediate agreement and are extremely cautious regarding the position of Carles Puigdemont’s side. But they admit that the situation has nothing to do with that of just a few weeks ago, when Santos Cerdán met in Switzerland with the Junts leadership to try to lift the broken bridges. The Minister of Finance and First Vice President herself, María Jesús Montero, went so far as to assure in Congress last week that “of course” that “this country will have Budgets.”
The objective with which the Government is working is that these conversations with Junts can crystallize, after the internal congresses of ERC and Junts, into more solid parliamentary alliances that serve to carry out the Budgets and that, in the process, support their desire for a legislature long now gripped by the poor legislative production and by the opposition’s offensive in the courts and the Koldo case, the first case of corruption in a Sánchez Government that places the former number two of the PSOE on the brink of indictment.
The hypothesis that Sánchez will carry out the accounts that manage to sustain the legislature is gaining strength even among the ranks of the PP. “He has water up to his neck, but he has a lifeline right now to save the legislature,” said the deputy secretary of the Popular Party, Elías Bendodo, in a closed-door intervention in the Senate that elDiario.es could contrast.
Bendodo conveyed to his spokespersons for councils, councils and island councils that “the question of true confidence that the Government is going to have is the Budgets”, as heard in the recording of that meeting to which this newspaper has accessed. “If there is a Budget it is a support for Sánchez, and I do not rule out that there is a Budget,” he stated.
“If there are General State Budgets, the Government believes that it saves the legislature. Could be. It would have Budgets for the 25th and the possibility of extending them for the 26th,” he commented before pointing out: “It is very possible that there will be Budgets.” The PP leader pointed out that the withdrawal of the spending ceiling last month that the Government decided is due to the fact that “Junts and Esquerra” have asked for time to hold “their internal congresses”, which will be held this fall. “And then they will negotiate.”
“Negotiating Budgets is super easy with other groups, you give what they ask of you and you have Budgets. Since this Government has the great capacity to give in everything in order to continue, I dare say that it is very possible that there will be a Budget. Or as a lesser evil, that there is a spending ceiling and we will see if there are Budgets,” he concluded.
But the Government does not only work on the Budgets. Already a month ago, the President of the Government signed with employers and unions a new agreement on pensions that involves extending the period to request a retirement pension from two to three years with limits on the reduction of working hours. In line with what was agreed in the summer, the agreement contemplates the “improvement of the compatibility between the retirement pension with work and the transition to a flexible retirement adapted to each person.” And Moncloa’s objective is to move it forward even with the support of the PP.
According to elDiario.es, sources from the leadership of the party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who are aware of the meetings that the opposition leader held in recent days with social agents, assure that the Popular Party will support the latest retirement reform agreed upon between the Government. , unions and employers in social dialogue if the text “arrives clean”, without modifications, that is, if the Government does not include any extra to the agreement between employers and workers.
The favorable vote of those from Feijóo would mean for the Executive to achieve the necessary support for this last block of the retirement reform to go ahead. Furthermore, it would imply a change in the PP, which in the past has not supported the coalition government’s pension reforms even though it had the support of social agents.
Despite the pitched battle experienced these days between the Government and the opposition over corruption, there are also expectations of reaching an agreement between the two major parties regarding a reform of the Immigration Law that implies a solution to the management of unaccompanied migrant minors. According to the parliamentary sources consulted, the three-way dialogue between the socialists, the popular parties and the president of the Canary Islands will be activated “discreetly” in search of an agreement.
The horizon they manage in Moncloa is that all this legislative momentum will be accompanied, as the weeks go by, by a relief of the situation in the Courts. The most complex issues that Pedro Sánchez faces are, by far, those that have to do with the accusation of his partner, Begoña Gómez, and the procedural situation in which the once super-powerful Minister of Transport and Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, José, is left. Luis Abalos.
They continue to defend in the Government that the case of Begoña Gómez will come to nothing and that with Ábalos the attitude of the Executive has been “forceful”, with his file of expulsion from the party and his expulsion from the parliamentary group. Although among the socialist ranks no one hides that what the case may bring from here on represents a political problem of the first magnitude.
They do trust the Executive that sooner rather than later other cases that have been a blow to the shoe in this last week will decline, such as the complaint for illegal financing filed by the PP, which already rejects Anti-Corruption, or even the investigation of the Attorney General of the State for its actions in the case of the boyfriend of the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, for two tax crimes. Both the president and the entire Government have vociferously defended the Prosecutor’s actions.
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