MADRID, 18 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) –
Esquerra (ERC), Bildu and Junts, the pro-independence parties that Pedro Sánchez counts on to overcome the investiture vote, have no intention of going to the Zarzuela Palace to inform the King of their intentions before a hypothetical investiture of the PSOE leader, as confirmed to Europa Press by parliamentary sources of these formations.
The King will have to face an unusual round of consultations next week to designate a candidate for the investiture since, for the first time in recent years, there are two candidates who aspire to ask for the confidence of Parliament: Alberto Núñez Feijóo, as the winner of the elections on July 23 and with 171 committed votes, and Pedro Sánchez, who sees himself capable of weaving alliances and adding enough votes to overcome the vote, as he has managed to win the majority of the Congress Table.
In this context, the round of consultations becomes especially relevant, in which the Head of State will directly survey the parties with parliamentary representation to find out what their predisposition is before the investiture of one or the other candidate,
Article 99 of the Constitution establishes that, “after each renewal of the Congress of Deputies, the King, after consultation with the representatives designated by the political groups with parliamentary representation, and through the president of the Congress, will propose a candidate for the Presidency of the government”.
The Magna Carta does not determine that the winner of the elections should be a candidate, it simply states that whoever achieves the confidence of Congress will be sworn in as president, either in a first vote with an absolute majority or in a second with more votes in favor than against.
Therefore, it is Congress who chooses the new Prime Minister, but it is the King who decides who will submit to the investiture debate. Until now, the decision was simple and there was only one candidate on the table, the one with the most votes in the elections, and another thing is that later his candidacy prospered or not in the vote in Congress.
Only once, in January 2016, did the winner of the elections inform the king that he was resigning as a candidate, considering that he did not have enough votes: Mariano Rajoy. This forced the head of state to organize a second round of consultations and end up giving the opportunity to whoever came second, Pedro Sánchez, who failed to be sworn in.
On this occasion, both the winner of the elections, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the one who claims to have options to overcome the investiture vote, Pedro Sánchez, have shown themselves publicly willing to assume the task of submitting to the investiture debate.
From the PP they claim that Feijóo was the winner of the elections on July 23 and that he has already secured the vote of 171 deputies (PP, Vox and UPN) with the option of also joining the Canary Coalition. As they emphasize, the PSOE still does not have the guaranteed support of a large part of its hypothetical allies, much less the independentistas of ERC and Junts, nor the nationalists of the PNV and the BNG, parties that insist on refusing to give “blank checks”. .
Pedro Sánchez, for his part, considers the PP and Vox tandem “failed” and dismisses the PP’s calculations as “magical cabals”. The Socialists use as proof the vote of the Table of Congress, in which Vox did not support the PP, which was left with only 139 votes, and instead the PSOE reached 178 seats, the absolute majority of the Chamber.
However, several of the eventual partners of the PSOE are not going to inform the King of their plans. The pro-independence ERC, Junts and Bildu, as well as the nationalists of the BNG, do not recognize the political authority of the head of state and, in the case of the Catalan paridos, have maintained a boycott since his speech after the illegal referendum on October 1, 2017.
