Pedro Sánchez is convinced that the amnesty definitively consolidates the legislature, and assumes that he will have Budgets in 2024, 2025 and 2026 and will finish his four years in office, in the face of an opposition that daily maintains that the Government’s situation is untenable. Traveling through Chile, where he concludes a Latin American tour in which he has visited two progressive presidents, the Brazilian Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the Chilean Gabriel Boric, Sánchez has taken advantage of the last appearance before the press to send a very clear message about the continuity of the Executive with a mocking tone towards the opposition, which continues to trust in its fall and thought it was close after the terrible result in the Galician elections and the corruption scandal of the Koldo case. It is a vain hope, says the socialist president, because after the amnesty pact it has become very clear that he has a majority to govern and he intends to finish the legislature.
“I am very sorry for the opposition,” Sánchez said ironically. “In the last elections, the Spaniards said that they wanted a progressive government and not a reactionary one of the PP and Vox. And that’s what’s happening. We have a Government that is raising pensions, that is reducing inequality, that is proposing the law against trafficking today. We are launching a progressive agenda. That is what the Spaniards voted for, and there are going to be four more years of a progressive government no matter who it may be. I know that for some they are going to be very long, but that is democracy,” he mocked.
Sánchez and his delegation of businessmen and journalists will make the return trip to Spain with a stop in Bilbao so that the President of the Government can attend a rally for his party, already in the race for the Basque elections on April 21. After that stop, the delegation will continue on its way to Madrid. Sánchez has been highly criticized by the opposition for using the official plane to go to towns where there are PSOE rallies. What the president usually does is hold an official event in the same city where he has the rally to justify the trip, but that does not save him from criticism from the opposition, which insists that he uses official means for party events. In this case, Sánchez has organized, before the rally, a visit to a company, Tecnalia, “the largest center for applied research and technological development in Spain and a benchmark in Europe,” according to La Moncloa.
When asked about the Budget, which will be the next milestone, Sánchez did not want to specify dates this Friday, but he took for granted the political stability that he always boasts of. “We want to approve the Budgets for 2024, 2025 and 2026. There is a Government for a while. We are going to do a lot of things. “We are going to talk to all the groups to get them out as soon as possible.”
Sánchez and his team are clearly euphoric after the amnesty pact, which they believe completely changes the legislature and guarantees the stability of the Government. And they have also decided, after a few very difficult weeks, to go on the offensive to claim the measure as a very positive decision. “Still today, in 2024, the press questions have to do with a crisis from 2017. Look at the amount of energy we are wasting instead of talking about Gaza, the drought, equality, the reindustrialization of Spain. What we are doing is calling for reconciliation, this is what we are doing to overcome those judicial consequences that we have been dragging on since 2017. The striking thing is that those who were responsible for this 2017 crisis, that is the PP, do not feel challenged with a problem that they helped fuel. My responsibility is to contribute to coexistence and that is what I am going to do,” the president assured. “I ask Spanish citizens who have doubts to trust this amnesty law because it will be beneficial for coexistence and also for the economy. In Catalonia there is investment, there is tourism, because there is concord and reconciliation.”
The president seems determined to go on the offensive after going through one of the most difficult moments of his mandate with the scandal of Koldo case and with the refusal of former minister José Luis Ábalos to deliver the deputy’s certificate due to political responsibility. The Moncloa wants to turn around this delicate political moment, and for this, the key is the amnesty, which despite having significant rejection even among socialist voters, has become for the Government the point it wants starting his recovery of the political initiative.
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Sánchez is now trying to convince his electorate that the amnesty will be seen over time as a great decision to close the process, in the same way that pardons now look better than they did at the time they were approved. But above all he tries to turn around the opposition’s criticism. “We are modifying the law with some suggestions from the Venice Commission. The law entered constitutional and will leave constitutional. And what we see is how the right always fails at the great events in the history of Spain. There is no nobler objective for a Government than to contribute to reconciliation, and that is what we are doing.” The change in discourse is therefore radical after the agreement on the amnesty. The president, who has made a tour focused on two progressive governments, has also shared messages with Boric against the advance of the global extreme right. He now returns to Spain convinced that he is beginning to get out of the political hole in which the government has put him. Koldo case.
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