Yesterday, the coalition government carried out the Royal Decree-Law that, as requested by the social agents and demanded by PSOE and United We Can. And he did it for the minimum -175 votes in favor against 174 against- and breaking the parliamentary alliances maintained until now. But above all, he did so immersed in controversy because the vote that made the difference came from a PP deputy, Alberto Casero. Initially his action was attributed to a mistake, but it is not at all clear that it was a mistake.
The popular spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, explained that the deputy, who was ill, cast his vote electronically by pressing the button corresponding to no. However, the system did not respond as it should and notified him that he had pressed yes. Then, Casero appeared in Congress to be allowed to vote in person, but they did not allow him access.
But there is still another reason that leads the PP to describe what happened as “cacicada”. According to the popular, Casero informed the parliamentary group of his party what had happened and it was in charge of transmitting to the Congress Table that there had been an anomaly in the vote of one of its deputies. Moreover, the president of the Lower House, Meritexell Batet, was aware of this information according to the popular, but that did not prevent Casero’s erroneous vote from being counted.
Moreover, Gamarra argues that, when the Popular Group wanted to expose what happened at the end of the vote, “the word was withdrawn and the plenary session was concluded, saying that the Table had already resolved on that incident.”
The incident, still to be clarified, provoked reactions beyond the PP. The president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, denounced a “ribbling” in the vote on the labor reform in Congress. The leader of Vox criticized on Twitter that the vote on the labor reform has been a “new and very serious socialist attack on national sovereignty.
Conflicting day
The controversy surrounding Casero’s alleged error was the culmination of a much more eventful session than the Government anticipated. The Executive had been recomposing the ranks for days to be able to save the refusal of the PNV, which in the end did not abstain, but added six votes to the bloc of the noes, and from the nationalist left that subtracted another 21 from the Government, especially damaging the 13 deputies of ERC and the five of EH-Bildu. The government saved the pothole by going to two parties that until now have shown little collaboration with the Coalition Executive, Citizens, who lent their nine votes, and Navarra Suma (UPN), a member of the PP, with two deputies.
But the surprise jumped in the vote and the two Navarrese confirmed on Twitter that they had skipped the voting discipline of their formation and had pressed no. Only the error of the popular deputy allowed, then, to validate the RDL.
The victory became a grotesque during the voting
What seemed like a rickety but sure victory turned into a grotesque during the voting. On Wednesday night, 176 votes in favor and 173 against were taken for granted. Among the last to set their position were the PNV, a no instead of an abstention, Pablo Cambronero, the fugitive deputy from Ciudadanos, who also voted against, and the two deputies from Navarra Suma, who in the morning seemed to vote yes and in the afternoon they opted for no.
Hours before, the only two leftist parties, Compromis and Más País, who joined the coalition government, declared yes. The Valencian Joan Baldoví acknowledged that it was difficult for him to decide the vote and that he had received many messages from people from Compromis asking for his vote against. Although also many messages of support, according to him he qualified.
Likewise, the four deputies of PdeCat, and the representatives of Teruel Exists, the Regionalist Party of Cantabria (PRC) and the deputies of Nueva Canarias and the Canarian Coalition voted positively. They were joined by the 120 of the PSOE and the 33 of United We Can, since they have not yet replaced their deputy Alberto Rodríguez.