This Tuesday and Wednesday Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), will have to submit his name to scrutiny in the investiture session before the Congress of Deputies to try to become president of Spain.
Although he won the elections on July 23, with a significant victory over his rival Pedro Sánchez, of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (Psoe) and current acting president, He did not obtain the majority necessary to be invested as head of government.
The Spanish parliamentary model, unlike the presidential model that exists in Colombia, It forces the winner of the elections to be voted on in Congress where the deputies have the last word.
This model, consequently, expresses that the Presidency of Spain is not necessarily achieved when the elections in which citizens vote are won. This is an electoral paradox that has led various critics to propose a constitutional reform that would allow the winner to automatically become head of government.
(Also read: Why would the election of the new president of the Spanish Congress benefit Pedro Sánchez?)
The negotiations in Parliament, carried out during the weeks following the July election day, They point out that Núñez Feijóo will not win the Presidency in the investiture debate. He has a total of 172 deputies, if they add their own and those of the parties that support it: the right-wing Vox, the Canarian Coalition (CC) and the Navarro People’s Union (UPN). To be president, the conservative leader needs 176 deputies in his favor.
Either way, The procedure obliges the candidate to present his government program in Congress, and, after that, all the parliamentary groups intervene, which is followed by the candidate’s final presentation and then gives way to the vote.
If he does not obtain a sufficient majority to become president, he will have a second chance 48 hours later. The presidency would go ahead with a simple majority (more yeses than noes), which would possibly not be enough either.
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Why is the election in the hands of the independentists?
Both Núñez Feijóo and Pedro Sánchez have tried to get enough votes to win the Presidency. The obstacle has been that the number of missing votes could only be provided by Junts per Catalunya, an independence party, whose leader Carles Puigdemont is a fugitive to avoid being taken to prison by justice after his participation in the referendum held in 2017, when one party of Catalonia sought separation from Spain.
The PP has maintained contacts with Junts per Catalunya to obtain its support, but suspended the talks after Puigdemont, former Catalan president, demanded an amnesty for those involved in the then referendum.
Actually, The contacts did not continue due to pressure from the hardest sectors of the right, the so-called hawks of the PP, among them the former president José María Aznar and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid. The Catalan PP, under the leadership of Alejandro Fernández, also opposed talks with the separatists.
(Read also: The lessons left by the elections in Spain / Analysis by Mauricio Vargas Linares)
What happens if Feijóo doesn’t get the votes for the investiture?
If the investiture of Núñez Feijóo were unsuccessful, King Felipe VI would call again for a new round of consultations. That is, conversations with the candidates who ran for election in order to determine which one could form a government. From there, most likely, would propose Pedro Sánchez for a new vote in the Congress of Deputies, having been the second most voted in the general elections.
The acting president also does not yet have the necessary votes in Parliament to continue in the Presidency, but it is more likely that he will reach an agreement with the independentists.
His possible investiture session would take place in November, but if he does not achieve his objective New general elections will be held on January 14 next year.
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The hard wing of the falcons
The hawks of the PP believe that Núñez Feijóo lacks toughness in his speech with separatism and against the possible amnesty.
This is “a process of constitutional self-destruction,” said former President Aznar. “These are dramatic times because there is a certain existential risk for the continuity of Spain as a nation, as a political community of free and equal citizens and as a State under the rule of law,” he said.
The PP, however, wants to give the impression of being a united party. On Sunday, Núñez Feijóo appeared at a political demonstration that brought together several tens of thousands of people (between 40,000 and 60,000) in Madrid, accompanied by all the heavyweights of his group: the former presidents Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, as well as the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the president of the community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who received loud applause.
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With cries against the Catalan independence movement, it seemed like what the press has described as an act by the leader of the opposition against a government that has not yet been formed.
Feijóo, then, endures in a complex balance, while his rival Pedro Sánchez has no problem challenging the hard line of his own party to continue as president of Spain.
JUANITA SAMPER OSPINA
TIME CORRESPONDENT
MADRID
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