The Socialists definitively closed in the early hours of this Friday the support that guarantees the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as President of the Government. After resolving the agreement with Junts in Brussels, the PSOE gave a final stretch to its negotiations with the PNV, culminated after midnight, and which, together with the support of the Canary Islands Coalition, ensure the acting president the support of 179 of the 350 deputies in Congress, all except those on the right. PP, Vox and Unión del Pueblo Navarro will be left alone against Sánchez's candidacy with 171 negative votes. Sánchez has increased the perimeter of his support with the Canary Islands Coalition, whose executive has finally joined the formations that will offer the yesto the socialist leader. The investiture session will be next week.
Sánchez and the president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, solemnized their pact on Friday morning in the Congress of Deputies. The Basque leader then detailed the agreements to the press, very satisfied with the results obtained. The PSOE is committed to implementing within two years a very old demand of the PNV: the transfer of all the powers provided for in the Statute of Gernika and which have never been materialized in four decades. There are about thirty of them, and among them is a very prominent one: the economic regime of Social Security, an issue that had been resisted during the last legislature by the minister responsible, José Luis Escrivá. The government also agrees that in the Basque Country regional labour agreements should take precedence over state ones, something it opposed two years ago and which led to the PNV's rejection of the labour reform.
Faced with the confidence with which Ortuzar explained the agreements, the PSOE did not take long to cool the scope of what was agreed on the economic regime of Social Security. The issue is not among the transfers that will be finalized in three months, said the acting Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, and even in the period of more than two years "it will be difficult" to carry it out. The also deputy secretary general of the PSOE allowed herself to emphasize that her party and the PP itself have agreed several times on this issue with the Basque formation without it ever being finalized.
Pedro Sánchez (left) and Andoni Ortuzar, this Friday in Congress, after signing an agreement for the investiture. Moeh Atitar
The Socialists have agreed to open another negotiating process on the nationalist claim to go beyond the current Statute. There, the PNV will propose formulas that will allow "the national recognition of the Basque Country" and the establishment of a "bilateral relationship" with the State. Nationalists argue that this is possible within the framework of the Constitution, since it recognises in its transitional provisions the "historical rights" of the Basque Country. That objective would involve the elaboration of a new Statute endorsed by the majority of the Parliament of Vitoria, according to Ortuzar. Both parties have also given themselves a period of two years for this process.
"In times like this of maximum complexity and political uncertainty," said the PNV leader, "all political forces must act with the utmost responsibility and high vision." The Basque leader, who negotiated the agreement together with his spokesman in Congress, Aitor Esteban, stressed that the PSOE has gone further in its guarantees than in the pact signed four years ago by both forces to facilitate Sánchez's previous investiture. Then, Ortuzar explained, the PSOE promised to "study" nationalist demands. This time, according to him, a semantic nuance has been introduced to move up a notch in the compromises, since the PSOE not only speaks of "studying", but of "negotiating". In the final stretch of the last legislature, the PNV often complained that Sánchez's government failed to comply with some of the agreed issues.
The purpose of the PNV is that the understanding with the future Executive will last throughout the legislature, as long as the Socialists maintain their commitments. "I trust President Sanchez's word, but our commitment is linked to the loyal fulfillment of the agreements," Ortuzar said. The Peneuvista leader admitted the complex panorama presented by the legislature in the face of the heterogeneity of what is presumed to be the parliamentary base of the future government and because "all the votes are going to be needed all the time." He illustrated it with a very Basque metaphor: "We're all on the same trawler and we have to try not to let the blades collide". Even so, he guaranteed that the PNV will be "tough and mature," even to take "unpopular measures" that, according to him, may be necessary.
Ortuzar made very clear the abyss that has opened up between his party and the PP in the face of the rapprochement of the Popular Party with Vox. The demonstrations of these days against the future amnesty law have seemed to him a "horror". "I thought that Francoist nostalgia had disappeared," he said in an alarmed tone. And he took the opportunity to highlight that the reactions of the PP in recent weeks do nothing more than "reaffirm" the decision that his party took the day after the elections of 23-J not to negotiate anything with the PP as long as this formation maintains agreements with Vox, whose political attitude he described as "clearly anti-democratic".
Minister María Jesús Montero and the secretary of organization of Coalición Canaria, David Toledo during the signing of the agreement between PSOE and Coalición Canaria in the Congress of Deputies, this Friday. Moeh Atitar
The Socialists have reached 179 supports for the investiture by also joining the Canarian Coalition with a series of commitments and investments of the so-called Canarian agenda, which are the same that that formation signed on August 22 with the PP for the failed investiture of Alberto Núñez Feijóo. The yes of the Canarian deputy Cristina Valido is a single vote but with symbolic relevance for Sánchez, since his postulates are very far from the independence movement. In fact, the Canary Islands Coalition made a pact on the islands with the PP to evict the PSOE from the autonomous government, voted in favour of the failed investiture of Feijóo and is against amnesty for those prosecuted for the Catalan independence process.
After signing the agreement with María Jesús Montero, both the deputy Valido and the Secretary of Organization of CC, David Toledo, appeared to highlight that they had "signed with their heads more than with their hearts" and looked above all thinking about obtaining from the "inevitable" government of Pedro Sánchez a series of commitments, investments and works in infrastructures for the Canary Islands that they quantified, in the next General State Budget, by about 1,000 million euros when the forecast of the previous budgets had remained at 800. Some of these items, however, had already been subscribed to and pledged in previous agreements. The two leaders stressed that they had chosen to join the bloc for "the entire legislature" of Pedro Sánchez when they saw that his investiture was going to prosper and not to distance themselves from possible benefits agreed with the central government, which they specified in matters of State such as the migratory crisis, the reconstruction of the island of La Palma after the volcano, the water crisis in La Graciosa and other measures.
David Toledo even went so far as to point out that the current migration crisis is more important and more of a state crisis for the Canary Islands than the amnesty law for Catalan pro-independence parties. CC, in any case, endorsed to the PSOE negotiators that they will not support this law, which has been one of their great internal stumbling blocks in this negotiation. CC stressed that in the pact there are many promises that have already been signed with the PP, but specified as the most relevant that the Government will reform the Minor's Law to include that it is mandatory and not voluntary that the administrations have to assume the immigrant minors who have arrived in the thousands to the islands.
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