Feijóo turns against Sánchez and returns the accusations of "insolvency" and "bad faith"

Alberto Núñez Feijóo entered the Senate ring on Tuesday with more aplomb than in the previous round to deliver a speech directly to the jaw of the Prime Minister, whom he has accused of "presiding over the Government on the back of lies".

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
18 October 2022 Tuesday 10:31
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Feijóo turns against Sánchez and returns the accusations of "insolvency" and "bad faith"

Alberto Núñez Feijóo entered the Senate ring on Tuesday with more aplomb than in the previous round to deliver a speech directly to the jaw of the Prime Minister, whom he has accused of "presiding over the Government on the back of lies".

And good proof of his undisguised intention to turn around the result of that debate at the beginning of September has been his insistence on accusing him of governing and carrying out failed general budgets with "insolvency" or, failing that, with "bad faith". The same attacks that the socialist poured on him in the face-to-face that they held just six weeks ago.

From there, the crossing of statements has been in crescendo. If in the previous debate that both held in the Upper House, the leader of the PP was willing to reach specific agreements with the Government, "but without ever being parliamentary partners", today Feijóo has withdrawn his hand outstretched to Sánchez to urge him to change ministers: "Because of his desire to pit some Spaniards against others, the best social decision for Spain is to change the government to stop weakening and dividing it," he pointed out before making one last request. "Withdraw the general state mortgages" –in reference to the budgets– "and present new ones after correcting their growth forecasts by several organizations".

"In the name of the people I am not going to shut up," he continued. "They have been wrong in all the economic forecasts since they came to the Government; I am not saying this, all the international organizations have said it (...) that the Government has always failed in its economic forecasts, that it builds its latest budgets on dismantled projections for false, will it be insolvency or bad faith?", he stressed.

Lacking a deputy act and having to settle for confining his opposition work to the Upper House, Feijóo has had a month and a half to reorganize his strategy. And the new course marked passes more by the body to body than by the debate of ideas that has been summed up with one of his last sentences: "The Spanish have stopped believing in you."

The general tone of the speech by the opposition leader has been critical. Especially when reproaching him for boasting of "growth when Spain will be the last European country to recover the levels" prior to the pandemic. Or "employment when unemployment is led." To the point that Sánchez himself has demanded that he lower the tone in his subsequent reply "in order to preserve" the CGPJ negotiation. "It seems that we can reach an agreement. It is very relevant that we can reach an agreement," the socialist leader stressed.

Feijóo has avoided commenting on, or amending, the progressive and social democratic recipes deployed by the Executive since the start of the energy crisis resulting from the war in Ukraine and has focused on wearing down the image of the Prime Minister by blaming him for "morally unacceptable" actions that they will "burden future generations with the largest public debt in history".

For all this, making it ugly that his tax cuts do not reach the middle classes, and that "instead of lowering taxes for the majority of the family, he raises them", the Galician has predicted that these will be Sánchez's last accounts in Moncloa .

One of the anecdotes of the debate has come in the reply turn. Feijóo has made his time limitation ugly again – 15 minutes for his first intervention and another 5 to answer the reply (which have finally been extended by 10 more) – in the face of the absence of limits that Sánchez has arranged.

And after being accused by Sánchez of not providing a single proposal, the national leader of the PP has deposited his proposal to save the economic and energy crisis on the table of the president of the Senate, Ander Gil. The same one that he sent to the Chief Executive in his day but that, according to him, has not obtained a response from the President of the Government.