Madrid, (Samajweekly) Spain’s right-wing Vox party has announced its decision to table a censure motion against the incumbent government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez in September.
The decision was announced by Vox leader Santiago Abascal during Wednesday’s session of the Spanish Congress (lower house), where Sanchez had explained the deal agreed with the European Union (EU) on a fund to help the bloc recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, reports Xinhua news agency.
Abascal said his party was presenting the motion against a government that was “illegitimate”.
Sanchez responded ironically to the motion by asking that “if it is so urgent, why are you delaying it until September? Is it because you are going on holiday?”
Analysts believe that Vox’s move has little chance of getting cleared through Congress as the party has just 52 seats in the 350-seat lower house.
Furthermore, the main right-wing opposition People’s Party (PP), which has 89 seats, has already implied that it will not support the motion.
“Don’t count on us for maneuvers aimed at distraction, which only strengthen the PSOE (Sanchez’s Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party),” PP Secretary General Teodoro Gracia-Egea tweeted.
Vox did very badly in the recent elections for the Basque and Galician regional assemblies, winning just one seat in the Basque Region and none in Galicia (where the PP won its fourth consecutive overall majority).
Observers say that Sanchez could consider the censure motion a chance to not only negotiate the votes he needs to remain in power, but also to garner support for his budget proposals in Parliament.
