“I owe myself to those who called for ‘equality’ in Madrid”

Feijóo has once again insisted on that same idea this Tuesday: his impossibility of assembling the majority necessary to fulfill the mandate to which he committed himself before the king last August. In a long speech, close to an hour and a half, the leader of the PP has dedicated the entire first third to attacking the coalition Government currently in office, and has then built his proposal on the basis of what that Executive has done in the last five years

The beginning of Feijóo’s speech, more typical of a motion of censure than an investiture, has pivoted on a strong idea that the PP has tried to sneak in, with little success, in recent weeks: that it does not govern because it does not want to. In fact, as he has said, because he is not willing to accept the amnesty.

“Without further ado, ladies and gentlemen: The amnesty or any equivalent or analogous formula is an appropriate instrument to overcome the Catalan conflict. Likewise, this conflict will not be definitively resolved if we do not contemplate the right of the people of Catalonia to decide, through a referendum or any equivalent or analogous formula.” This is how Feijóo started, implying that if he said that, he would remove the investiture.

Ý continued: “This would be enough, right? Well no. I’m not going to defend that. I have principles, limits and a word. And above all I have a duty that I will not shirk.” But the reality is that if he accepted the amnesty, he would lose Vox’s 33 votes and would be much further away from the majority than the 172 supports he has had for a month.

“I feel like I am a representative of other citizens (the majority) who on July 23 voted for parties that also did not have in their programs: neither amnesty, nor self-determination, nor any other equivalent or analogous formula. I owe myself to all of them. I owe it to those who cried out for equality this Sunday in the streets of Madrid. I owe myself to the majority of Spaniards,” he said.

“I won the elections”

Feijóo has dedicated the first part of his speech to justify an investiture doomed to failure since he was appointed by Felipe VI, even before. “My party won the elections,” he has said on several occasions. “We won the elections, with an absolute majority in the Senate and more deputies than the acting president has ever achieved in the elections in which he ran,” he added. “This debate is the logical consequence of the electoral result,” he insisted. “Why doesn’t anyone present want me to be here?” he pointed out.

“This session portrays those who put the general interest before the general interest, and those who did not and will not do so,” he noted. “It portrays me, and it portrays you, Mr. Sánchez,” he said. “I am here because I have won and because I accepted the proposal. But also because I want to offer my country an alternative,” he reiterated.

This “alternative” has not offered anything different from what Feijóo has proposed in recent months. The leader of the PP has reiterated his proposal for six State pacts: one Institutional, for the Economy, Families, the Welfare State, the Water State and the Territorial State.

“This afternoon we can start an honest dialogue,” he noted at the end of his speech, despite the fact that Feijóo has tried, without any success, to add a single vote to the 172 he has committed since August.

Renunciation of sedition, reform of the CGPJ (now yes)

The PP candidate for the investiture, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has proposed this Tuesday a new crime of “institutional disloyalty”, as his party had already advanced, and punishing embezzlement according to its severity. However, he did not give any further details during his inauguration speech.

This crime would replace the repealed crime of sedition, but Feijóo has not explained what it would consist of or what the penalties would be.

In the program for the July 23 elections, the PP proposed recovering the “crime of sedition in the Penal Code.”

In addition, he has committed to Congress “the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary at the same time that a law to reform the election model is registered in this Chamber.” “I don’t want to control Justice. “Not me,” said the leader of the right.

But the PP, both with Pablo Casado at the helm, and with Feijóo for almost 18 months, has kept the CGPJ blocked for five years so as not to lose the control it has had over the governing body of the judges for a decade, when it was president. with an absolute majority Mariano Rajoy.

Feijóo asks Junts to vote

The PP candidate, as his number two, Cuca Gamarra, anticipated yesterday, has addressed an express message to the nationalist parties that have denied him their support. Not only to the PNV, as might be expected, but also to Junts, the party led by Carles Puigdemont since Waterloo.

And throughout the speech he has attacked that party, which he left without mayor in Barcelona by supporting the PSC candidate, Jaume Collboni.

The leader of the PP has rejected, for example, “that Junts decides for all Spaniards, even less so after everything they have demanded.” And he has attacked the initiatives that, according to him, divide the Spanish people.

But in the final part of his speech, Feijóo expressly addressed Junts and the PNV. “And directly, gentlemen of the PNV and Junts. They have not voted for me to give them self-determination or amnesty. Have they voted for you to apply Podemos’s economic policy? “Really?” he said.

Feijóo has previously launched a message “to nationalist parties or to those openly and actively pro-independence.” After declaring himself as the president most “sensitive to autonomism, to the importance of co-official languages ​​and to territorial particularities” (and that after calling the Congress’s simultaneous translation system “karaoke screens”), he asked them for their vote: “ I must affirm before you that I am a trustworthy president. “I will never say yes to everything, but I have no doubt that Catalonia and the Basque Country could use a President of the Government who is not going to deceive his citizens.”