In the general elections held on July 23, Nueva Canarias-Bloque Canarista was only 3,000 votes away from Luis Campos obtaining representation in the Congress of Deputies for the constituency of Las Palmas. And, had he reached that seat, in the investiture session of candidate Alberto Núñez Feijóo held this week, we would have voted no.
A refusal based on the fact that we do not share his deeply conservative project and we also reject the support for his investiture from the extreme right, with whom we consider it impossible to maintain any kind of understanding. No territorial party, right or left, offered its votes to the candidate, except for the conservative regionalists of UPN and CC.
From Nueva Canarias we have pointed out that the investiture debate of Núñez Feijóo did not serve to address the current social, economic, environmental and territorial problems of the Spanish State. Nor of the Canary Islands, of course. It was limited to the staging, once again, of the confrontation between blocs; and showing that the support for the PP is limited to the bench of the extreme right, together with UPN and CC.
A circumstance that, since the election night of 23J, already predicted that the right, with the result that the polls threw, were not in a position to achieve either an absolute or simple majority. Nor, therefore, to gather enough support to form a Government. If the PP wanted the votes of PNV or Junts, it had to exclude Vox. If it wanted those of Vox, it could not count on those of PNV or Junts. Therefore, the candidate and his closest environment did not tell the truth when they claimed that they had majorities to be president and that they more or less voluntarily resigned in an exercise of coherence. With the chosen wickers, the end of the adventure was their parliamentary defeat.
Opposition
The investiture session could serve to try to shore up Feijóo's leadership within his party (and in the whole of the right, with an Abascal relegated to the background) before an upcoming investiture of Pedro Sánchez, if he gets enough support, or a scenario of new elections in January. It was an investiture previously condemned to failure, unless some socialist deputies listened to the unethical calls for defection. Proclamations made by different leaders of the PP, among others the Andalusian president, Moreno Bonilla.
In any case, it must be remembered that Pablo Casado also reaffirmed himself internally when he intervened in a clear and forceful way in the motion of censure of Abascal against Sánchez in October 2020, distancing himself from the extreme right. And barely fourteen months later, in February 2022, he was ousted after his confrontation with Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
Challenges of the State and the Canary Islands
In NC-bc we are aware of the great challenges that the state legislature has. In the most diverse areas. From the economy and employment to the increasingly difficult access to decent housing. From the strengthening of public services to permanent action against the Climate Crisis that increasingly causes catastrophes -fires, floods, heat waves, droughts...- of greater dimensions. Without forgetting the relevance of migratory phenomena.
And all this requires the adoption of political decisions and, also, to have a progressive and fair taxation to face these commitments and to reduce social inequalities.
We are also aware of the issues that, in addition, specifically affect the Canary Islands. Among them, the fulfillment of the REF, the statutory development, the solution to the energy problems of the Islands, the adequate response to migratory phenomena, the co-management of our airports...
As well as the defense of the interests of our land in the General State Budgets and in the debates that will be opened, whoever governs, on the new autonomous financing and the possible condonation of the debt of the autonomies, issues in which the Canary Islands must maintain a firm position so as not to be seriously harmed.
Conservative policies do not include the essential task of overcoming inequalities and advancing in equity. Their alleged vision of equality between the territories or before the Justice, in which they insist so much, completely forgets the need to transform a reality in which a better distribution of wealth is needed. And in which the first fiscal measures put in place by the conservative autonomous governments of which they are part, also in the Canary Islands, benefit a small minority with very high incomes, harming the financing of the administrations and the welfare of the social majority.
Nor was any step taken in a debate, the territorial one, in which it is necessary to shed light on formulas that make it possible to advance towards a plurinational state. This requires broad agreements that are unattainable today in the midst of the current confrontation. And that would be impossible with a state Executive supported by the far right, which prefers the return to Francoist centralism.
As could be observed throughout the debate and in the subsequent votes, the conservative candidate did not gather any support among the progressive formations and, also, among the different nationalist formulations present in the Congress of Deputies. This is explained by the fact that it was an investiture in which the 33 seats of Vox were essential, a
formation characterized by its ultra positions: its rejection of the advances of women, its denial of climate change, its homophobia and its racism.
As well as its visceral centralist conception of the State. This made it impossible to broaden the base of parliamentary support for Feijóo.
More right-wing and centralist
A situation, the presence of the extreme right in the alternative to take Feijóo to the Presidency, which does not seem to worry the slightest to a Canarian Coalition that gave its support so that the most right-wing and centralist Government of the democratic period could be established. Voting, without flinching, without expressing any discomfort, together with the extreme right that wants to end the autonomies and that permanently questions the rights of people and social advances; the threatening discourse and the reactionary rhetoric of Abascal must have gone unnoticed. And now, after voting for Feijóo and his Executive together with the extreme right, CC will try to agree with the socialists. Anything goes.
After the announced failure of the PP candidate, a new stage opens. In which Pedro Sánchez aspires to establish a parliamentary majority that will allow him to continue in La Moncloa at the head of a government of progressive orientation. This requires generosity and vision, as well as recognition by all parties that negotiation also has its limits. It will not be, therefore, an easy task to reach agreements and avoid an increasingly less dismissable electoral repetition at the beginning of 2024.
