More than two months have passed since the polls gave Aragon a comfortable absolute majority to the Popular Party with the addition of Vox. Nevertheless, the negotiations for the investiture of Jorge Azcón as regional president, simmered under monastic secrecy, are still open today. With no date marked on the calendar for the investiture, the ultra-right is pressuring the popular these last few days to reach an agreement before August 23, the deadline to avoid an electoral repeat that is of no interest to either party.
Azcón has always maintained, both actively and passively, that his goal is to govern alone, a desire that collides with the devilish regional parliamentary arithmetic that the elections gave. At the outset, the popular party has 28 seats, the same as the sum of the left-wing bloc (the PSOE, the Chunta, Podemos and IU), which is why in the first vote it would need the seven deputies of Vox to achieve a majority absolute
If this does not happen, in the second round it would be worth adding the support of the only deputy of the Aragonese Party (PAR) and the abstention of Vox and the three parliamentarians with whom Terol Existeix (TE) counts. The two regional formations have been favorable under certain conditions, such as a programmatic agreement that rejects the transfer of the Ebro (PAR) or that Vox is not in the Executive (TE). Despite this, the extreme right insists in public on asserting its votes: it will not abstain and vote against the investiture if it is not part of the Regional Executive.
The negotiations, the most opaque that can be remembered for these lands, have had complicated moments, although without reaching the level of Murcia or Extremadura. One of the most tense took place at the end of June, when the PP, in a failed attempt to replicate the Balearic model (programmatic agreement and presence in island councils in exchange for governing alone), handed over the Presidency of the Courts to Vox , who chose the controversial denialist Marta Fernández for the position.
Now it is the squabbles in the respective domes in Madrid after the generals that are delaying the process when there are two weeks left for the General Courts to be constituted and the members of the Congress Bureau to be elected, in which Vox aspires to renew the position that held the last legislature.
In this sense, Vox's political action deputy secretary, Jorge Buxadé, asked the PP on Monday to get out of its "confusion" after 23-J and to stop using Murcia and Aragon as a "currency" for other possible pacts. Vox "has moved us from its initial position", he said, and continues "with an outstretched hand" to agree with the PP "useful and safe governments to take measures immediately".
Also from Zaragoza, the deputy spokesman of the ultras in the regional courts, Santiago Morón, yesterday urged Azcón to close a programmatic agreement as soon as possible without renouncing that his formation enter the government, with Valencia as a model. "Nor would we like it to be the last day, right away", he said. From the popular seat, silence.
Meanwhile, the local opposition blames Azcón for the lack of "transparency and clarity" in the negotiations and Madrid's interference in a local process that is now part of the game being played on a national scale. "I am concerned that the dates are moving forward and that it is decisions emanating from Madrid that are preventing the formation of a government. The people of Aragon have learned that we do well when we do not accept Madrid's interference", criticized the still acting president, Javier Lambán. In less than three weeks it will be known whether or not there is an agreement.
