The PSOE no longer only views with suspicion Junts’ non-legal proposal to urge President Pedro Sánchez to submit to a vote of confidence: Now it is exploring formulas to prevent it from even being processed. Parliamentary sources assume that the socialists will use the majority that, together with Sumar, they gather in the Congress Board to prevent this request from the Catalan independentists from being debated and voted before the Plenary. And they will do it, these sources explain, based on a precedent in 2013; The lawyers still have to prepare their report on whether or not to admit the Junts initiative for processing, but what they say will not be binding and the final decision will depend on PSOE and Sumar.
The qualification in the Congressional Board is the first filter that any initiative must pass, including this non-law proposal. Qualifying an initiative, in principle, is a purely bureaucratic step and not political: the Board does not have to rule on the content of the proposal, but only on whether it has errors in form or if it is legally correct. In fact, the vast majority of initiatives presented by parliamentary groups are accepted for processing, and it is the Plenary Session of Congress that subsequently votes to decide whether they begin to be processed or not.
However, since Monday the PSOE has privately transmitted its doubts about Junts’ non-law proposal. The socialists consider that the initiative does not comply with the regulations because it intends for Congress to urge the Government to do something, present a question of confidence, which is solely and exclusively the decision of the president. And they rely on a precedent from 2013 in which the Chamber Board, then controlled by the PP, rejected a PSOE motion that demanded President Mariano Rajoy “assume political responsibilities” for the outbreak of the Gürtel case with the argument of that “would mean a hidden motion of censure.”
Parliamentary sources also give as an example a decision made this Tuesday by the Congress Board, which has unanimously rejected – that is, with the votes of PSOE, Sumar and PP – to process a non-law proposal from Vox that sought to have the Chamber Baja urged the Government to “immediately propose to the king the dissolution of the Cortes Generales.” In this case, the Board has understood that this prerogative corresponds solely and exclusively to the President of the Government, and therefore that Congress cannot require you to apply it, and much less exhort the king, who is a mere executor of that presidential order. The argument is basically the same as the one that the PSOE uses to not accept the Junts initiative for processing.
The sources consulted explain that the Board will wait until the Congress lawyers issue their legal report to make a decision at their meeting next Tuesday. Nevertheless, This document is nothing more than a non-binding guide: The Table—in which PSOE and Sumar have a majority over the PP—can qualify or not any text regardless of what the jurists of the Lower House say.
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