Alex Trelinski
THE INVESTITURE debate for acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will take place this Wednesday and Thursday in Madrid’s Congress.
The Congress president, Francina Armengol, made the expected announcement on Monday.
Sanchez last week secured his controversial deal with Catalan party Junts and then topped that up with agreements with the Basque BNG party and the single Canary Coalition delegate.
In exchange for the votes of the Catalan separatist groups like Junts, Sanchez agreed to a controversial amnesty for those involved in a failed 2017 secession attempt.
The amnesty plan has split public opinion, with hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against it across the country on Sunday.
Armengol used her Monday announcement to condemn ‘strongly any type of violence’ such as that recorded in ‘the streets of Spain these days’ in reference to the attacks and arrests outside the PSOE socialist headquarters in Madrid.
The socialist leader in Catalunya and ex-national health minister, Salvador Illa, defended the proposed amnesty law stating that it ‘demonstrates the solidity and capacity for generosity of Spanish democracy’.
Last week’s deals mean that Pedro Sanchez and the PSOE are now set to secure an absolute majority of 179 votes among the chamber’s 350 representatives.
If by any chance he did not get the absolute majority, a simple majority would suffice in a second vote.
Sanchez’s Socialists came second in the July 23 general election, but Alberto Nunez Feijoo, leader of the Partido Popular, which came first, was unable to put together a majority in Congress, leading King Felipe to ask Sanchez to have a go.
If Sanchez had failed, then another general election would have been held in January.
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