The strict application of Pedro Sánchez’s “resistance manual” generates ridiculous situations such as the one experienced yesterday in the Congress of Deputies, when the PSOE parliamentary group – in view of its solitude in rejecting the PP’s proposal to tighten congressional control over the government’s foreign policy – chose to vote in favour of the proposal as well.
Some of the government’s allies in the investiture, such as ERC, had already announced their support for the PP’s proposal (that the government should explain its positions before the European summits, and not only a posteriori, as now), so it was clear that the PSOE was going to lose the vote. In view of this, the PSOE opted to back the opposition’s proposal as well.
The PP’s proposal came at a particularly delicate moment for the government, when several ministers from the ultra-left wing (Sumar) have publicly criticised the fact that they were not informed of the agreement with Ukraine to supply Kiev with weapons worth more than a billion euros. Sumar’s leader, Yolanda Díaz, speaks publicly and directly of ‘disloyalty’.
A few days earlier, the PSOE had already lost a vote in Congress – to ‘end pimping’ – and its parliamentary weakness was clear to see. This was repeated last week when, an hour before the vote, the PSOE opted to withdraw its draft law on land in the face of the evidence that it was also going to lose the vote.
So far this term, the government has only managed to pass one law – referring to higher artistic education – although it is foreseeable that tomorrow, 30 May, it will pass the second, the controversial Amnesty Law agreed with Junts and ERC to obtain the backing of the Catalan pro-independence supporters for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the government.
