Yesterday, Pedro Sánchez gave the traditional speech to the Socialist troops at the start of the new year. At the party’s interparliamentary meeting in Congress – where deputies, senators and MEPs meet – the President of the Government deployed an exercise in pedagogy to dispel the feeling that the legislature is unviable. This, after a troubled start to the new year, in which the Executive lost a first vote due to the dispersion of its allies – due to the support of the PNV for the recognition of Edmundo González as President-elect of Venezuela – and conveyed the message that it is willing to resist, even without the “contest of the legislature”.
Sánchez is seeking to regain control over his majority and the public agenda, projecting an image of legislative proactivity. In addition to the contacts with key partners in the government arithmetic last week – the meetings that Félix Bolaños held with Junts and PNV with public significance – there is now the recovery of the Action Plan for Democracy, which will be approved today by the Council of Ministers, or the round of regional presidents who will parade through La Moncloa in the coming weeks. The Government’s objective is to monopolize the spotlight, fill the public debate with content and thus divert interest from the issues that dominate it and that are adverse to it: the judicial fronts of the “Begoña Gómez case” and the “Koldo case” or parliamentary weakness.
However, despite the Government’s efforts to attract attention, the party is full of unrest and concern. The feeling, according to several leaders consulted, is that “the legislature is unviable.” “The legislature does not exist,” says a leading socialist. “Resisting in these conditions is materially impossible,” says another who has been warning of the volatility of having handed over governability to a party as unpredictable as Junts. All voices agree on the same thing: the keystone will be the Budgets and if these do not prosper, the legislature will be doomed. They point out that with extended accounts they can resist for a few months, but not until 2027 as Sánchez preaches, who yesterday reiterated that “there is still a legislature for a while.” “Having to reaffirm it continually is not a good sign,” assumes a source, who recalls that Junts is needed to approve laws and validate decrees. “It is not true that one can govern without Parliament.”
And this is without mentioning the reforms that Europe demands for the disbursement of European funds, the Next Generation, on whose injection the Government relies its ability to resist in La Moncloa. Nor does it send more reassuring signals that the socialist leader has decided to call the 41st federal party Congress. “A comprehensive renewal is coming, but the underlying issue is governability… very complicated,” say the sources consulted. However, Sánchez seeks to project himself immune to the difficulties and says he is subscribed to “optimism” in the face of bad omens. After weeks of standstill, the Council of Ministers will approve today the Action Plan for democracy. A compendium of measures for democratic regeneration that emerged as a “separate point” after the president’s five days of reflection in April and that aim to fight against what he defines as a “mud machine.”
So far, the Executive has not provided any further details than what Sánchez himself offered in a special appearance last July, in which he limited himself to detailing the European regulations – which must be applied – on this matter. The Government is seeking to portray the PP with this issue, to force its support for the initiative, reminding it that its party already endorsed it in Strasbourg.
The aim, government sources said at the time, is to create a “skeleton” to be filled with content by the parliamentary groups with which meetings without public significance were initiated. The only concrete measure that the president put forward before the summer break was a reform of the Electoral Law with a double objective: “establishing the obligation to hold electoral debates between candidates in the media” and a reform of the LOREG so that all surveys publish their “guts”, that is, the microdata and the methodology for estimating results.
Beyond making executive proactivity visible, the president is also trying to educate about the parliamentary weakness of his government and is trying to re-consolidate the ranks. To do so, he has recovered the campaign argument, appealing to the threat of an “ultra wave that drags our country into a dark era from which it cost us so much to get out.” The best cement to rebuild a “wall” with fissures against the PP and Vox. Sánchez defined the current parliamentary fragmentation as “inevitable”, recalling that it is “inherent” in other European and regional parliaments, which forces them to “weave majorities with diverse parties.” At this point, he acknowledged that although there are differences that “separate” them and that are “insurmountable,” there is also a “desire to move forward” and to prevent the “ultra-right majority” from advancing.
“Let us not be misled by those who want to turn Congress and the Senate, especially the Senate, into an unedifying spectacle,” he said to his followers, calling for the consolidation of the theses of those who want to impose their “far-right majority” or “we will block everything.” For this reason, the president asked to “assume with the height of State the arithmetic dictated by the ballot boxes” and recalled that if the Government loses a vote “the one who wins or loses is not this or that political party, but the whole of society.”
At this point, he recalled that “if you want, you can” and how other minority governments approved such important social advances as divorce, equal marriage, the revaluation of pensions according to the CPI or the Minimum Vital Income, among other policies. “The opposition insists that the current absence of clear majorities invalidates the work of the Cortes Generales,” Sánchez complained, advancing in this exercise of pedagogy and remembering that the absence of majorities also affects the PP and Vox, because there are 10 autonomous governments in this situation, most of them governed by the popular party, or that “there have been more years without absolute majorities than with them.” Sánchez offered his “outstretched hand” and the “doors of Moncloa open” in the run-up to the regional presidents starting to parade through the Government headquarters next Friday in the territorial round of bilateral meetings that he plans to carry out before calling them together multilaterally.