In a recorded message of just over three minutes, presented as an "institutional declaration", and flanked by a Spanish flag, the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, announced this Friday a motion of no confidence, the second presented by his party in this legislature, although without giving any date for its formalization.
He has limited himself to informing that Vox will begin talks today with other groups to seek "a neutral candidate, with government experience, who is not a member of any political party and commits to calling immediate [general] elections."
What the ultra leader has extended is to explain the reasons why "the time has come to present a new motion of censure", after the one that failed in October 2020. Abascal has resorted to the amendments to the Penal Code presented today in Congress by the PSOE and Unidas Podemos to ensure that President Pedro Sánchez has perpetrated a "new attack on the Constitution" and "finalizes the assault on the judiciary", ending "the last vestiges of the separation of powers ” in Spain and “directly threatening the rights and freedoms of all Spaniards”.
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Institutional statement by @Santi_ABASCAL in response to Pedro Sánchez's coup against the separation of powers.
⬇️⬇️⬇️ pic.twitter.com/vw4FDTWYoQ
– VOX 🇪🇸 (@vox_es) December 9, 2022
This is what it means, in his opinion, to reduce from three fifths to a simple majority the necessary votes for the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) to elect its two candidates for the Constitutional;
eliminate the obligation that the magistrates appointed by the Government and the CGPJ have to be appointed at the same time;
and abolish the suitability examination of applicants by the high court.
For Abascal, the President of the Government is "preparing a scenario that would allow him to carry out the self-coup that Pedro Castillo has given in Peru and there would be no legal capacity to arrest or judge him."
Although the Vox leader refers to events of recent days, almost four weeks ago, on November 14, he already urged the PP to present a motion of censure against Pedro Sánchez and to seek a "consensus candidate" to lead it, although he admitted that he did not rule out supporting the popular president himself, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, if he ran.
Abascal then acknowledged that he had not discussed the issue with Feijóo himself, but he publicly replied that the only motion of censure that he was contemplating is the one that the Spanish would put to the Government at the polls, in the regional and municipal elections in May 2023.
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Vox has 52 deputies, much more than the 35 (10% of the chamber) needed to present a motion of censure on its own in each session.
However, Abascal has resisted presenting it again after the experience that led to the fiasco of the first one.
Not only did he not manage to collect a single vote outside of his own, but he also suffered a severe setback from the then leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, which meant the final break between the two.
The inconsistency of using a catastrophic discourse against the Government (today he has spoken of "wounded homeland and democracy") and not making use of all the parliamentary resources available to him to change it made his position untenable.
Abascal knows that the numbers do not add up, even if the PP and Ciudadanos joined his initiative.
For this reason, he has asked the entire right to act with "state sense", he has assured that "it is the duty of the entire opposition" to present the motion of censure and has warned that "all the deputies of Congress must take a picture before this new blow to the Constitution.
And that, he has added, "whatever the result."
Abascal has not cleared up the question of when Vox will formalize its new motion of no confidence and if it will present another candidate or will end up running itself, like two years ago.
Also then, Vox speculated on the possibility of seeking a consensus candidate, but, after a few weeks of rumors, Abascal did not want to miss out on the media focus that face-to-face with Sánchez gave him.
At this time, when the ultra party is down in all the polls and Feijóo cannot intervene in the debate on the motion in Congress, the temptation to use it to regain prominence is even stronger.
But the only possibility that Vox has of attracting votes from other groups is to look for a candidate "with government experience" coming from the ranks of the UCD, the PP and even the PSOE.
The leader of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, has accused Pedro Sánchez of carrying out a "self-coup" and of being "a dictator's apprentice" with the reform that he has proposed to modify the Constitutional election system, and has appealed to the PP and Vox to promote a motion of no confidence against the president.
But she, despite using almost the same arguments as Abascal, has not given her support because she thinks that the one who has to formalize it is Feijóo.