WORLD NEWS | Spanish government faces no-confidence vote from Vox

BARCELONA, March 21 (AP) Spain’s leftist coalition government faces a no-confidence vote proposed by the country’s far-right Vox party, with lawmakers debating a motion Tuesday that has little chance of success.

The vote will be held on Wednesday in the 348-member lower house. No other political party said it would back Vox’s 52 lawmakers in their attempt to overthrow the Socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

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In a move that was widely criticized by other political parties and Spanish media, Vox leader Santiago Abascal broke with convention by not presenting himself as an alternative prime minister.

Instead, in an effort to attract votes from centrist and left-wing lawmakers, Vox persuaded a former Communist Party member and university professor to lead the no-confidence measure.

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Ramón Tamames, 89, a former lawmaker in the 1970s and 1980s, has promised that if the vote succeeds, his only course of action as prime minister will be to call immediately for a national election to coincide with the Local elections on May 28.

Tamames said he disagrees with many of Vox’s positions, including its denial of climate change, baseless allegations that immigrants are linked to more violent crime, and its attacks on feminism.

But he did share the party’s concerns about Catalan and Basque separatism and its patriotic defense of the flag and the monarchy.

Vox announced its intention to file a no-confidence motion after Sanchez’s government reformed laws on sedition and graft in December to ease legal pressure on Catalan separatists.

“Señor Abascal, the candidate you put forward is just a decoy to hide behind your back and hide your despicable political agenda,” Sanchez told the poll’s organizers.

“Should I apologize?” Abascal asked sarcastically in his defense. “It is not our intent to demean this legislature’s legacy. We cannot demean it any more than you already have.”

Traditional conservatives in the People’s Party, which leads parliamentary opposition to the government, said they would abstain.

Popular party leader Alberto Nunez Fejoo criticized the vote as merely ceding parliamentary victory to Sanchez and not necessary for general elections to be held in December.

Sanchez’s coalition with the leftist United We Can party is trying to recover from recent disagreements over how to deal with their own sexual consent laws, a coalition made up of smaller regionalist parties and even Catalan and Basque country secessionists. A minority government backed by activists has inadvertently reduced the sentences of hundreds of convicted felons.

The partners hope to restore their reputation as a progressive and effective law enforcer ahead of Spain’s presidency of the European Council in July.

Political observers say Vox is trying to gain traction ahead of a busy election season.

Vox aims to be a key figure in the conservative government’s town halls in May and then win the big prize at the end of the year, when it hopes to form a coalition with the People’s Party in the national government.

“Most no-confidence votes in Spanish politics are doomed from the start, but they are also seen as opportunities for the parties that proposed them to be in the spotlight,” said Montserrat Nebrera, a Popular analyst and former lawmaker. (Montserrat Nebrera) party in Catalonia, told the Associated Press.

This is the second time Vox has proposed a vote of no confidence in the current government. Its first attempt to oust Sanchez in October 2020 as he dealt with the coronavirus pandemic and replace him with Abascal failed.

Tamames, a respected economist and leading member of the Spanish Communist Party, spent time in prison as a political prisoner before restoring democracy after the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975.

He then began his journey across the political spectrum and joined a conservative predecessor, the People’s Party.

Tamames has now completed his political transformation by forming an alliance with Vox, an upstart party that emerged as the third-largest force in parliament in the 2019 elections. He described his radical transformation as an evolution, saying he was “not a fossil”.

“I came here as one of my last tributes to this beautiful country,” he told the chamber. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)