It will not be the first failed investiture. Mariano Rajoy and Pedro Sánchez know what it is like to lose the vote to be president and they became president only after repeating the elections. What makes Alberto Núñez Feijóo's election next week different is that there is another candidate with the possibility of governing, Pedro Sánchez, who is not the one who will defend his project in that investiture. Feijóo will do it, who won the elections and who today has more support than the leader of the PSOE, 172 after having added Vox, UPN and the Canarian Coalition, but they are four less than necessary.
The general secretary of the PSOE reserves. Although to reach the magic figure he must agree with Sumar, ERC, Junts, PNV, Bildu and BNG, Sánchez is optimistic and assures that he will get the support, despite the conditions imposed by Carles Puigdemont.
With this panorama, the debate that starts on Tuesday is presented as an election between two blocs, and therefore between two candidates. Not voting for Feijóo is voting for Sánchez, and not agreeing with what the acting president is apparently willing to concede is voting for Feijóo. The result of the vote will not only mean the failure of the popular candidate, but also the confirmation that the PSOE candidate has the possibility of governing later.
For this reason, the program that Feijóo will propose will be the least important, because it will not become government action. The six great pacts that he will put on the table, so that they focus the management of a government alone – regeneration pact; for the welfare state; for economic healing; for families; national water pact and territorial pact – will not become a reality, and they have been on the back burner for weeks.
The popular party is missing four votes and in a last attempt to get them, calls proliferate to some socialist deputies – four is enough – to break voting discipline. The last was the Andalusian president, Juanma Moreno, who yesterday asked the PSOE deputies to “rebel, for their principles,” and to support Feijóo. Cuca Gamarra did the same, arguing that “amnesty means kneeling before the independentists.”
Amnesty. This word belongs to Sánchez's investiture, but it will focus Feijóo's debate. He himself has made this term dominate the political debate by denouncing the socialist's intentions to be president, thus recognizing that his candidacy will not prosper, or as the last cartridge so that the internal discrepancies in the PSOE over the amnesty, give him the four votes. that are missing.
The long month that Feijóo has had to wait for his investiture, to avoid a repeat election falling during the Christmas holidays, has made clear the impossibility of the popular leader to reach more agreements. But the remoteness of the date, in his opinion, prevented him from being the opposition candidate for the investiture.
That, they assure the PP leadership, will be from Friday, when the second vote takes place, although there are those who consider, in the PP, that there is still time, whatever remains until Pedro Sánchez negotiates with Puigdemont and the rest of the parties and be re-elected president. Until then, the threat of an electoral repetition that gives Alberto Núñez Feijóo the four deputies he lacks will be alive. If there are not, the PP will activate the Senate and its 137 deputies in Congress, to oppose and not make things easy for the PSOE.
