MADRID, 13 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of Congress, Meritxell Batet, has confirmed this Monday the dates of the debate on the motion of censure against Pedro Sánchez that Vox presented with the economist Ramón Tamames as a candidate for president of the Government: it will be on March 21 and 22.
This has been confirmed by Batet herself in an appearance before the media in the Lower House.
Vox registered its motion of censure on February 27, but the Congressional Bureau did not give it formal approval until last Tuesday, March 7, after verifying that it met the requirements established by the Regulations: bear the signature of at least one tenth of Congress (35 deputies) and the name of a candidate for the Presidency.
The text was sent to the Government and to the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups so that they were informed and a period of two days was opened for the presentation of possible alternative candidacies. As planned, no one took that step and, after completing that formality, the president of Congress could already set a date for the debate.
Finally, Batet has set it for Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, just before the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, undertakes two international trips, to Brussels (Belgium) to participate in a meeting of the Council of the European Union and to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) to attend the Ibero-American Summit. With the choice of these dates, the leader of the PSOE will be able to go to both international events boasting of having defeated another motion of no confidence against him.
Thus, the sixth motion of no confidence in democracy, the first with an independent candidate and the second promoted by Vox this legislature, will be debated 22 days after registering, just one day more than its immediate predecessor, which had Abascal as a candidate.
The one presented by Pedro Sánchez in May 2018 only took a scant week to reach plenary, and it is that on that occasion the PP chose to rush the date mistakenly convinced that, after approving the Government Budgets, the censorship of the PSOE was intended failure.
The PP of Mariano Rajoy and Ana Pastor took more time with the motion of no confidence by Pablo Iglesias, which was registered on May 19 and debated on June 13, almost a month later. The Podemos initiative had no chance of prospering, since not even the PSOE supported it, and the PP was in no hurry to debate it.
The mechanics of the debate foresees that the candidate will be presented before the Plenary by one of the signatory deputies, who in this case Vox has already announced will be Abascal himself. In 2020, he himself was the candidate and was presented by his then head of the poster for the elections in Catalonia, Ignacio Garriga, the same role played by the PSOE Organization Secretary, José Luis Ábalos, in 2018 with Sánchez, and the ‘ number two’ of Podemos, Irene Montero, with Pablo Iglesias in 2017.
The Government may intervene to reply to Abascal, but not the other parliamentary groups. Then it will be the turn of the candidate, who will have unlimited time to present his government program. And after a break, it will be the turn of the parliamentary groups, although the details will be set this Tuesday by the Board of Spokespersons.
In accordance with parliamentary customs, the candidate debates with the Government, which chooses who gives the reply, and with the different parliamentary groups. In any case, the candidate sets the pace and in this case Ramón Tamames, 89, will decide how he will respond to the other groups. Unless speaking turns are reduced to a minimum, the next day, March 22, the vote will arrive, which is public and by call, with each deputy expressing out loud the meaning of his vote.
To prosper, the motion of no confidence requires obtaining an absolute majority in Congress (176 votes), an objective that seems unattainable given the positions expressed by the groups in recent weeks.
