Spanish Parliament rejected a motion of censure against the Prime Minister

USPA NEWS - President of the Spanish Government, the socialist Pedro Sanchez, emerged on Thursday unscathed from the motion of censure against his government presented by the third political force in Parliament, the far-right party Vox. After two days of debate, Vox did not win the support of any opposition group and its 52 deputies, in a Parliament with 350 seats, were insufficient to evict the social-communist coalition of Government, headed by Pedro Sanchez.

The Plenary of Congress rejected this Thursday, with 52 votes in favor and 298 against, the motion of censure presented by Vox against the Government chaired by Pedro Sanchez, which proposed the party leader, Santiago Abascal, as a candidate for the Presidency of the Government. The debate on the motion of censure began on Wednesday with the intervention of VOX deputy Ignacio Garriga, who criticized the Government's management of the pandemic and accused him of seeking to break up Spain. Next, the leader of the far-right formation, Santiago Abascal, took the floor to accuse Sanchez of heading "the worst Government in the last 80 years." Abascal blamed the Prime Minister for negotiating with the heirs of the terrorist organization ETA and spent 30 minutes of his time reading the names of the more than 800 fatalities of the terrorist gang.

The defeat of the vote of no confidence was to be expected. At no time during its parliamentary process did it achieve the support of any group. There was interest in knowing which would be the vote of the main opposition party, the conservative Popular Party (PP), whose electorate, according to polls, was torn between "no" and abstention. Finally, the conservatives voted against it because, in their opinion, a vote of no confidence without sufficient support undermines the unity of the center-right and reinforces the Government's position. The conservative leader, Pablo Casado, described the motion as a "waste of time" and marked differences with the extreme right by differentiating between the "alternative" that the PP represents and "the right that the left most likes," in reference to Vox.

"You offer the left a guarantee of perpetual victory," he reproached the leader of VOX. "He is the partner in the shadow of this Government, to whom today he has given this victory," he added. Pablo Casado lamented the electoral fragmentation of the center-right and accused Vox of wanting to evict the conservatives from Parliament. "We are the serious and responsible alternative that Spain needs," he said before adding: "You are part of the block of rupture, and we are part of the network of affections that unite the Spaniards." The motion, Casado stressed, "is one more lie from Vox for Sanchez to continue in Moncloa."

The speech of the opposition leader, described as "brilliant" even by the second vice president of the Government and leader of the far-left coalition Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, left the leader of Vox, Santiago Abascal, "perplexed." "I am sorry for the personal attack you have made against me today," he replied, because "it is infamy." And he asked him: "Do you really think that we are the same as the Government that has agreed with ETA?"

At the end of the debate, the President of the Government, Pedro Sanchez, took the floor, declaring himself "relieved" by the failure of the motion of censure against him. Shortly before, the Moncloa palace had announced to journalists that the president would make an announcement during his intervention in the debate. The announcement, addressed to the leader of the opposition, was the offer to paralyze the reform of the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ its acronym in Spanish), the control body of Spanish judges, with the purpose of starting negotiations for the renewal of its members. Negotiations previously rejected by the Popular Party because, in their opinion, socialists and communists want to break the balance between progressives and conservatives within the CGPJ.