After the gesture of ERC yesterday renouncing to present an amendment to the entire general budget of the State to "give room for negotiation", the party of Oriol Junqueras insists on linking its final votes to the validation of the accounts to be fulfilled the “commitments to resolve the political conflict”. In other words, to materialize in some way, predictably with the reform of the Penal Code, the process of dejudicialization that the central and Catalan governments promised to undertake at the last meeting of the dialogue table.
This was stated by the Deputy Secretary General and ERC spokesperson, Marta Vilalta, at the end of the party's first interparliamentary meeting, a meeting that brings together the 64 Republican deputies in Congress, the Senate, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and the Balearic Parliament. “Everything is important and we have to do everything at the same time”, she pointed out after justifying the resignation to the presentation of an amendment to the entire state budget.
We did so "thinking about giving room for negotiations (...) to achieve more ambitious budgets that meet previous commitments in investment, social and economic policies, and also the commitments made to resolve the conflict", Vilalta pointed out.
The general budgets of the State will very probably be able to move forward with the support of the majority of the groups that supported the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, in light of the votes that the Government has so far brought together the Government (190 to 159) to overcome the first obstacle, the parliamentary procedure, which will be voted on October 27. If this arithmetic is maintained, the Government could even afford to dispense with the 13 ERC votes for the final validation of the accounts.
The Republicans will give their votes in exchange for progress in this chapter despite the fact that this generates a barrage of criticism against the Republicans, for linking the negotiation to issues that have little to do with it, and against the Government, for lending itself to it.
At the moment, the central Executive insists on separating the issues and reaffirms its will to advance in the reform of the Penal Code to reform the crime of sedition, but the ERC's insistence on linking them does not help. This Friday, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, insisted on his willingness to face the reform, but he also insisted that he did not see "sufficient majorities" in Congress to undertake it.
Sánchez's argument contrasts with that of the ERC, which considers that if there are majorities to approve the budgets with some ease, there are also majorities to reform the crime of sedition. The discrepancies therefore lie in the content of the reform. The Government insists on a change to "adjust" the penalties contemplated for the crimes of rebellion and sedition in accordance with the legal systems of surrounding countries, which do not set sentences of 13 years in prison for these criminal types, such as Spain. In return, in the reform that the Executive keeps in the drawer, it is expected to reinforce the crime of disobedience to the Constitutional Court, something that ERC would not be willing to support because it would continue to affect numerous prosecuted still by the procés.
ERC claims its strength to "influence" and "press" for the general budgets to advance in social and economic matters, "and also, and for that we are, in the resolution of the political conflict." And they mark distances with the strategy of Junts "we are not those who say no to everything, nor those who say the worst is better, we are the ones who want to be useful", Vilalta pointed out.
But the Government insists on doing things differently, as Salvador Illa pointed out this Saturday. The leader of the PSC, in addition to disapproving that folders are "mixed" has insisted that the reform of the Penal Code is a legislature commitment that the Socialists agree to undertake, but "it seems prudent and reasonable to do so taking into account the right European comparison, that is, looking at what is happening in Europe”.
Both parties will have the opportunity to negotiate and agree on positions in the coming months. The success of the dialogue table between governments and the viability of the State and Generalitat budgets depend on it.
