Opposition forces Congress to regain control of government

• Direct. Last minute about the coronavirus crisis
• The map: the advance of the coronavirus in Spain

The opposition has won the battle for control of the government. After weeks of harsh criticism, the pressure of the parliamentary forces to regain their constitutional power to examine the Executive and hold it accountable for what many of them understand as an extraordinary concentration of power in the hands of Pedro Sánchez has taken effect.

Congress will recover control sessions next week and the opposition may finally ask the Prime Minister directly about the management of the health and economic crisis caused by the coronavirus.

The parliamentary sources consulted indicate that this plenary will be held on Wednesday , April 15 . Which means recovering some normality and reliving face to face between the Executive and the opposition. Something that has not been seen in Congress for almost 50 days. Since February 26.

In parallel, the Congress Table has also decided on Tuesday to lift the suspension of the deadlines for processing parliamentary initiatives. A measure that was adopted on March 19 with the votes of the PSOE and United We Can and that encouraged the PP and Vox because it meant paralyzing all activity and made it even more difficult to control the opposition.

In this way, the Executive was free to respond within a specific period of time to their questions or requests for documentation. Nor did it allow him to make amendments to the processing of government decrees as bills.

The end of these exceptional measures was celebrated as a "victory", in the words of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo (PP) and Macarena Olona (Vox). A change they equated to Moncloa's "rectification" by now allowing direct questions from journalists and the end of "pre-made press conferences."

The passing of the weeks, and the increase in the decisions taken, had led both the right-wing groups and the investiture allies, suspicious of a good number of the measures unilaterally approved so far, to be pressing to recover the control system. However, not all agreed with the modality when recovering the activity.

The PP and Vox claimed to fully recover it with face-to-face sessions, but reduced. Other formations preferred to gradually recover their normal work, as was the case with the PNV.

In any case, all of them were considering a greater degree of intervention in decision-making necessary and insisted on asking that Parliament leave its state of "hibernation".

In this pressure, the PP and Vox have been the two groups that had decided to break the deck of inaction. On the one hand, the popular came to announce that half a parliamentary group was going to attend the plenary session this Thursday, in which decrees to extend the state of alarm and those of economic measures to mitigate the effects of Covid-19 are debated and voted.

In the case of Vox, Santiago Abascal gave the order to challenge the confinement and that the party deputies return to their offices in Congress to work in person, and not from their homes.

The PP's decision on Tuesday generated an intense debate in the Board of Spokespersons for trying to change the "tacit pact" that had been reached to reduce the presence of parliamentarians. Finally, the popular ones backed down and the groups promised to maintain for now that the percentage of deputies present in the plenary session is only 10%.

The socialist spokeswoman, Adriana Lastra , came to describe the attitude of the PP as a "boycott of confinement". Similarly, Vox - who differentiated between going to the office and going to the plenary session because of the "overcrowding" of the seats - described this claim as "reckless" as being "unnecessary" and carrying a "health risk".

On the part of other forces, PNV, ERC or EH Bildu, who supported Sánchez's inauguration, had also begun to press to resume accountability and control. With questions and appearances. Just as Citizens asked.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Vox
• PNV
• Adriana Lastra
• United We Can
• Pedro Sánchez
• PSOE
• ERC
• Citizens
• Bildu
• Coronavirus
• Covid 19

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