There has not even been a call yet, and Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo are already heating up and tensioning a possible meeting between the two, which distances the possibility of reaching agreements.
If Sánchez speaks of a “working commission”, Feijóo sees a maneuver to “whitewash the negotiation table with the independentists.” If the president reiterates the accusation that the biggest case of lawfare is the blockade that the Popular Party maintains on the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), the popular leadership warns that if the law is not going to be changed, Sánchez “may save the call.”
After warning the day before of his intention to call Feijóo to a first meeting in this new mandate, before the end of the year, the president yesterday reaffirmed his comprehensive strategy by announcing, in an interview on Antena 3, that he is going to propose in said calls on the leader of the Popular Party to open a working commission to try to agree on three major State pacts.
The three “priority” issues that Sánchez wants to clear up with Feijóo at the start of this legislature are the approval of a new regional financing system, which has been out of date for nine years; the renewal of the CGPJ, which in turn accumulates more than five years with its mandate expired, and the specific reform of article 49 of the Constitution, to eliminate the term “disabled”, in reference to people with a disability.
“It is important that the two major political parties work with a horizon of agreement,” said the head of the Executive. “And in that working commission I hope we can reach some type of agreement,” Sánchez confided.
But the mistrust and confrontation fueled for so many months is now taking its toll. The PP does not trust. He believes that there are hidden intentions in calling that meeting. The popular ones consider that if Sánchez wanted to reach real agreements, he would call him directly instead of speaking to Feijóo through the media. For this reason, they fear that the President of the Government will use the meeting with the opposition leader to divert attention from his negotiations with Junts.
The PP thus sees the working commission proposed by Sánchez as “an attempt to whitewash its negotiating table with the independentists.” Feijóo believes that the way of negotiating until now, in the institutions, is still valid and yesterday the general secretary of the party, Cuca Gamarra, responded to Sánchez with a forceful: “No tables, no mediators and meetings on Spanish territory.”
Feijóo conditions the meeting on the president explaining himself about the amnesty law and informing him of the “concessions to the independentists.” PP sources point out that “Spanish people have the right to know what is being negotiated” and “the reasons why it must be submitted to an international verifier.”
Regarding the renewal of the CGPJ, the PP assures that it is not going to give an inch and if there is no change in the way members are elected, there will be no renewal. Regarding the reform of article 49 of the Constitution, he warns of the possibility that Sánchez's partners end up calling a referendum that gives rise to a debate on the monarchy or the right to decide. While regarding the financing system, the PP believes that this issue should be debated in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF), the body that guarantees multilaterality.
Sánchez, however, returned yesterday to defend and justify the future amnesty law for those accused of the process, negotiated with Junts and ERC, just as in the last legislature he approved pardons for imprisoned independence leaders. “There is virtue in this decision, because once and for all we have to leave behind the judicial drift caused by that trauma that October 1, 2017 represented, and everything that happened previously,” he assured.
The President of the Government, until now, had already warned that the PP will also benefit from this amnesty law, by facilitating coexistence in Catalonia and recovering a party like Junts that until now was “outside the system” as a political actor. . But Sánchez went a step further yesterday and assured that Feijóo would also have promoted this amnesty, if he had not depended on the far-right of Vox to be able to govern. “I am so convinced of the virtues of the amnesty law that I am convinced that the PP, if it had not depended on the votes of Vox to be able to carry out its investiture, and only on peripheral nationalism, would have approved the amnesty law” , he claimed.
But, given the cautions and misgivings expressed by the PP regarding the work commission offered by Sánchez, the Moncloa is trying to pressure Feijóo to accept the offer. And they throw a question into the air: “Why is the PP afraid to negotiate?”
