The Popular Party enjoys seeing the Government suffer in the votes of Congress, that it has to wait until the last second, for the ‘photo finish’, to know if it is going to be able to save a law, and that Félix Bolaños shows everyone your concern because you don’t have enough votes tied up with your preferred partners. And the enjoyment is even greater when in the end it is verified that Sánchez’s favorite allies, Bildu and ERC, leave him stranded and it is they, from the bench on the right, who come to the rescue in defense of a matter of State, as that of national security.
Yesterday, Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Cuca Gamarra kept the meaning of their vote on the National Security Law secret until the last moment.
And the PP ended up voting with the Government, as a “State party” and to make it clear that there is an alternative to Bildu and ERC, according to Genoa sources. “It is not our law, but it is a voting law,” said a PP deputy. “In no way could we vote together with Bildu on a matter like this,” other sources warned.
The PP places yesterday’s vote in Congress within the strategy set by Feijóo to make it visible that Sánchez can choose the path, because there is an alternative to his pro-independence partners and the heirs of Batasuna. “And if he doesn’t do it, everyone sees that it’s because he doesn’t want to,” they say in the PP.
After voting against the decree-law of anti-crisis measures, on April 28, among other reasons because their votes were not necessary for it to go ahead, the Feijóo PP could not afford to reject a law like the National Security law now, since that his overall strategy would be called into question. And he didn’t. “Now we have the upper hand,” said the general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, yesterday, who assured that her party now wants to negotiate the content of the law with the government, and if it does not agree, it will not go ahead.
The atmosphere between the Government and the PP is “rarefied”, they confess in the Feijóo team. Especially after Wednesday, when Sánchez went on the attack against the PP in the midst of the CNI crisis and called its leaders “mugs” while once again taking out the wild card of the past corruption of the popular as a throwing weapon. As is logical, it is not the best situation to sit down at the same table to negotiate… if they had the intention of doing so.
At the moment, what there is is a firm and persistent will from Feijóo to reach out to the government on matters of state, and to show that the PP is more than an alternative, rather than an opposition. There is a negotiation underway, that of the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which is not going to stop because the political confrontation festers. For now there are still discreet contacts between the two interlocutors, Esteban González Pons and Félix Bolaños. The PP is in the process of listening to the associations of judges, until next week, and is still waiting for the Government to put its proposal on the table. When it does, Feijóo’s party will set its stance.
The popular ones continue to defend that “the judges must choose the judges”, a condition that became a mantra in the Pablo Casado stage. But times have changed in the PP and at the moment they show much more flexibility when putting that idea into effect. “We want to reach a good agreement,” they say in Genoa, where they do not feel concerned by the urgencies or the priorities that this Government has.
The PP seeks and offers more agreements. The last one that Feijóo has raised is the one related to the security of the State and NATO, so that the big parties arrive with a “country position” before the Madrid summit, on June 29 and 30. The popular ones are finalizing the proposal, but they have not yet decided if they will send it to Sánchez at La Moncloa, as Feijóo did with his tax reduction plan, which the Government despised.
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