Friday, March 29

Sánchez trusts that the coalition will arrive united to the general elections to send a “good signal” to the left-wing electorate


Pedro Sánchez wants the coalition government to arrive together at the 2023 general elections. The socialist leader considers that he would send a good message to the left-wing electorate at a time when he is pointing to demobilization against a right that is coalescing around the PP . The president assumes that Alberto Núñez Feijóo now enjoys an advantage and that, as all the polls predict, he would now be in first position, but he hopes to turn these polls “around”. The hope is already in the municipal and regional elections in May, which will be the prelude to the national elections in December next year and to which it is assumed that Yolanda Díaz will appear leading the space to the left of the PSOE.

The Government calculates that it has implemented 98% of its 1,494 commitments and considers more than half fulfilled

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A rupture of the bipartite in the remainder of his mandate is not in Sánchez’s plans, which was a plausible scenario in the face of an unprecedented situation in national politics in which there had never been a coalition government. However, the president maintains that it is beneficial for the progressive electorate that PSOE and United We Can preserve the agreement until the end. “It is good that the Government arrives united at the end of the legislature. It is a good sign for the future because it means that two leftist forces understand each other”, he explained in an informal conversation with the journalists accompanying him on the tour of the Western Balkans that he has made to support the entry of those countries into the EU.

In the socialist ranks they have been ruling out, in addition, a break in the coalition. On the one hand, they consider that it would electorally penalize the party to which the decision was attributed, which is why they have always maintained that Sánchez would not take that step. On the other hand, they took for granted that the minority partner, who has been reducing his electoral results, would be blurred in Parliament. The idea that the socialists hold is that Yolanda Díaz needs the vice-presidency and Podemos needs the visibility of the government to boost her electoral chances.

What Sánchez also takes for granted is that the person in charge of Labor will lead the space to the left of the PSOE in the general elections, despite the fact that the vice president has already advanced that her Sumar project will not be ready for the municipal and regional elections. “I have no doubt that he will reach the elections,” said the president, who recognizes that his expectations of remaining in Moncloa depend to a large extent on his partners obtaining a good result.

Trust the drive to your left

What he does not want to go into is the existing disagreements in United We Can, which he attributes to the taking of positions prior to the negotiation within that space since the pieces have to fit together after the departure of Pablo Iglesias. However, he believes that his partners will overcome the conflicts and that Podemos will be part of a single platform for the general elections.

In the press conference to balance the political course last Friday, the president ruled out a new government reshuffle. In any case, touching the positions that correspond to the minority partner in the Council of Ministers would be a decision that the confederal group would have to accept. “I am very comfortable, very satisfied, with the work done by the Council of Ministers,” he replied.

“I empathize with a government that has experienced extreme situations. His work is quite positive”, he acknowledged during a stop in Mostar (Bosnia and Hergovina). In his service record, in addition to facing the pandemic and the consequences of the war that have marked the complexity of Sánchez’s mandate, he lists 150 legislative projects, in addition to two budgets “in time and form” and “very profound” measures such as the labor reform, the pension system or the educational law. “The important thing is that this Government governs to protect the working middle classes and to transform Spain,” they point out in Moncloa.

The next test for the health of the coalition will be the approval of the General State Budgets. In the talk with the journalists, Sánchez took it for granted that the public accounts will go ahead with the usual partners. Once the relationship with the ERC has been rebuilt after the espionage scandal against pro-independence leaders, in the Government they consider this crisis settled and maintain that the Catalan Republicans have no reason in addition to the traditional positions to reject the budget project for which the Executive has The first steps have already been taken with the approval of the spending ceiling, which once again marks a record for the possibilities of public investment.

“Stability” and relaxation of inflation as of September

Sánchez also highlights the importance that his arrival in Moncloa has managed to recover institutional “stability” after years in which Spain was without budgets and that the parliamentary blockade became the usual trend in a country in which, until then, elections had never been repeated. “A four-year legislature would put an end to the governability crisis in which the PP put Spain in 2015,” he argues in Moncloa.

Although in the Government they take for granted that the winter will be difficult for Europe, they also predict that the inflation that has set a record standing at 10.8% last month will begin to relax from September. In this context, Sánchez, who has room to recover in the face of the municipal and regional elections, largely also due to the pull of the socialist presidents and mayors who consider that, as in the case of the PP leadership in the Community of Madrid, Castilla y León or Andalusia, have been “consolidated”. “We are going to work to turn these polls around,” Sánchez said at the last press conference in which he assured that he would do it “without falling into euphoria” but without entering the “catastrophism” in which he places the P.P.



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