Feijoo says Sanchez is buying votes with public money

The president of the Spanish People’s Party (PP, right) said this Saturday that the socialists’ agreements with Catalan independents to contribute to the new Spanish government are corruption because they buy votes and public money with impunity.

“Exchanging votes for impunity is corruption. And buying the post of president of the government with the money of citizens is corruption,” said Alberto Nunez Feijoo in the city of Vitoria, the capital of the Basque Country, at the end of the regional congress of the PP.

The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), led by Pedro Sánchez, this week reached an agreement with the Republican Left Party of Catalonia (ERC) to help create a new left-wing government in Spain after the July 23 elections.

The agreement with the ERC includes an amnesty for those involved in Catalonia’s attempt at self-determination, which culminated in a unilateral declaration of independence in 2017, as well as issues related to the autonomous community’s financing and public debt and oversight of commuter trains. .

As part of the region’s debt, the agreement provides for the write-off of up to 20% of the total amount, 16 billion euros.

The Socialists assured that this debt forgiveness would be extended to all autonomous regions of the country.

At issue is the Autonomous Liquidity Facility (FLA), a line of credit through which the government provides money to autonomous regions so that regional leaders do not have to resort to markets to finance debt reduction or payments to suppliers.

Catalonia is the region with the highest debt and the 16 billion dollars that will be forgiven represents a large amount, and in some cases even several times greater than the total debt of any of the other autonomous communities, Alberto Nunez Feijóo emphasized this Saturday.

“I am disgusted that Sánchez is negotiating with citizens’ money to become president of the government, I am disgusted that he is using public money to get the post of president of the government. I’m disgusted that he pardons the corrupt, I’m disgusted that the verdicts are misuse of public funds, and it rewards those who spent the least with better funding,” said the PP leader.

In the last legislature, the Spanish government, already led by Sánchez and already made possible in parliament by the ERC, pardoned independentists who were in prison and changed the Penal Code in favor of other Catalan leaders accused by the courts, but has not yet tried.

Among these changes to the Criminal Code is the easing of penalties for embezzlement (misuse of public money), which Catalonia’s leaders are accused of over the funds used to organize the 2017 independence referendum, which was declared illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court. . .

Regarding amnesty and pardons, Feijoo said this Saturday that “there is no reconciliation” (an argument used by socialists to justify the measures) “when one of the parties seeks forgiveness without asking for forgiveness.”

To be reappointed as Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez needs the parliamentary support of five nationalist and independence parties from Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country, with two of which an agreement has now been reached: the ERC (seven deputies) and the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG). .

Both the ERC and the BNG had already made the previous Sánchez government viable.

The amnesty is the demand of the Catalan parties to make the new left government – the coalition of PSOE and the Somar platform – viable.

In addition to the ERC, amnesty is being demanded by Juntos de Catalunya (JxCat, seven deputies), the party of the former regional government president Carles Puigdemont, who has been living in Belgium since 2017, fleeing Spanish justice.

The other two parties with which the Socialists are negotiating are the Basque Nationalist Party (five deputies) and E. H. Bildu (six deputies).

If parliament does not appoint a new prime minister by November 27, Spain will have to repeat the elections.