Horribilis week of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez

USPA NEWS - Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez will announce on Friday his decision on a possible electoral advance, after Parliament rejected his draft budget for this year on Wednesday. The parliamentary vote yielded 191 votes against the project, 158 in favor and one abstention. Only the Socialist Party, which supports the Government, and the far left populist coalition Podemos (We Can) voted in favor. On the contrary, all the other parties of the parliamentary arc, including the Catalan separatists and the Basque nationalists.

Catalans and Basques supported the Government since the Socialist Party won the motion of censure against the former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, in June 2018. The Catalans expected in return the recognition of their right to self-determination and the acceptance of their independence. But the Government rejected both demands and broke the negotiations last week. And the Catalans withdrew their support. After the rejection of the draft budget, which had been criticized by the European Commission as unrealistic, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has only three options left: to call early legislative elections, to submit to a motion of confidence in Parliament or to resist on the basis of decrees until the end of the legislature in 2020.

According to Finance Minister Maria Jesus Montero, the electoral advance it's certain and will be announced by Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez at 10:00 a.m. (local hour, 5:00 a.m. ECT) of this Friday. The dates that are shuffled before the official announcement are April 14, date of great significance for the Spanish Socialists because it was the day on which the Second Republic was declared in 1931; on April 28; on May 26, coinciding with the European, regional and local elections to be held that day, or in the autumn. The regional Socialist leaders reject the legislative elections to be held on May 26 because, in their opinion, problems such as independence could harm their chances of being elected. The preferred date for the members of the Government is April 28.

The horribilis week of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who came to power after a motion of censure against the former head of Government, Mariano Rajoy, and barely has 84 deputies to support their proposals, began with the break with the dialogue Catalan separatists, continued with the rejection of the draft budgets for 2019 and will end the mandatory call for early elections, after eight months of Socialist government.

The opposition criticizes the Prime Minister who has violated his word to call elections as soon as possible after the motion of censure against the Conservative Government of the Popular Party. And this fact can be determinant of the result of the legislative because the Socialists have missed the current favorable to their ideas that were during the summer of 2018. Although government sources insist that the Cabinet has driven more than a thousand measures, most of social matters, the image of the Spaniards today identifies the Socialists with a party that negotiates and yields to the independentists, and a Government that does not work and is more worried about digging up the dictator Francisco Franco, died in 1975, than to solve the problems of the country.