Today, Congress will recognize Edmundo González as the elected president of Venezuela, causing a resounding defeat for Sánchez’s government. The non-legislative proposal presented by the PP will be approved with the support of Vox, the Basque nationalists, UPN and Coalición Canaria, parties that yesterday already confirmed their vote. In this way, Congress is in favor of validating Edmundo Gonzalez as the winner of the elections of July 28 and, therefore, the elected president of Venezuela. The non-legislative proposal implies, in theory, a mandate to the government, which it will ignore in practice since it maintains its refusal to act in this direction. But, even if it is not implemented, it does have a high symbolic meaning and is very important for the opposition to the Nicolás Maduro regime.
Last Saturday, Pedro Sánchez announced that he will govern without taking into account the legislative power, and the first opportunity he will have to execute this pronouncement is by refusing to recognize this mandate of the Lower House in relation to Venezuela.
In political terms, the non-legislative proposal promoted by the PP serves to once again demonstrate the rupture of the investiture bloc. The Popular Party leadership has sounded out all the parliamentary groups, including the PNV and Junts, to negotiate its proposal, and this will be the guideline it will follow for the rest of the parliamentary term. It has only left out Bildu.
These contacts with all the groups will be maintained in the future because they are part of a strategy that, as this newspaper reported last Monday, is based on finding the issues in which PNV and Junts can once again “feel like centre-right and progressive parties”. The objective is to “find the frontier issues” or the “nuances” in which the parties that support the Government “will have a hard time” voting against its proposals.
At the start of the new academic year, the PNV confirmed yesterday its decision to distance itself from the Government in its stance towards the Venezuelan opposition. And the Mixed Group forced the appearance of the Executive on immigration matters, after the popular leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, signed with the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, a plan with proposals to stop “the migratory chaos” that the islands are experiencing. The document calls for transferring migrants to other European countries, deploying the Police on transit routes and an extra fund for the communities.
PP and Junts have an effective channel of dialogue, while with the PNV the relationship moves with more difficulty. This is important in light of the Government’s announcement that it will present the General State Budget (PGE) for 2025, unlike what happened in the previous year. The decision to present it is strictly political, a manoeuvre to reduce the feeling that the legislature has reached a standstill, despite the fact that they take for granted that, at the latest, at the end of the year there will be a new budget extension. In the meantime, the Executive gains time to continue projecting its measures of tax increases for the rich and to blame its partners for being responsible for these proposals, more ideological and better selling among the left-wing electorate, not going ahead.
As it is a Government bill, the amendments to the PGE as a whole can be returned, without an alternative text, simply with a brief statement of reasons and a simple “petitum” asking for the bill to be returned to the Executive. The amendments would be successful if they get more yeses than noes: PP, Vox and Junts. And the same with the tax reforms.
The vote on Venezuela is the final point of the non-legislative proposal that the PP registered in August, and it enters the agenda at a time when it is particularly relevant due to the arrival of Edmundo González to Spain fleeing persecution by the Maduro regime. Génova has placed this debate at the top of its list of priorities because it has managed to get Congress to get ahead of the Government’s refusal to modify González’s status, and also of the pronouncement that, along the same lines as the Spanish Congress, will be made, foreseeably, in the coming days in the European Parliament.