Fernando Labrador |
Madrid (EFE).- The candidate for the Presidency of the Government in the motion of censure that will begin on Tuesday in Congress, Ramón Tamames, indicated last week that he agrees with the parliamentary group that proposes him, Vox, in “essential and fundamental” of his ideology, especially his attachment to the Spanish flag.
At a press conference, Tamames indicated that the text of the speech that had been leaked to the press was his, but he qualified that it was a “quite outdated” version that he was modifying day by day in the “detailed developments” he was making.
According to this version of the speech, corroborated by what Tamames expressed in his latest public statements, EFE has highlighted ten key ideas of what will be his speech:
Call for elections for May 28
Tamames will make it clear that “the main thing in the government program would be to prepare the general elections scheduled for December 2023, which it would be good to bring forward to May 28, making these elections coincide with the municipal and regional elections.”
“A decision that, whatever the end of this motion of censure, you should take as rationally as possible,” he will suggest to the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, for which reason, given the foreseeable failure of the alternative government, he will settle for recommend the electoral advance to whoever has the power, the chief executive.
democratic memory
The veteran economist, who in his youth was a prominent communist and anti-Franco militant, will blame Sánchez in his old age for trying “to dictate the history of an entire nation to his liking, with the alleged Democratic Memory, lacking the truth, with not little partisanship, favoring an idealized Second Republic”.
He will recall that in the Civil War “both sides committed atrocities” and will accuse him of “rushing the 1977 Amnesty Law to the attic.”
Legislative reforms
Tamames will allude to the probable third reform of the Constitution, now in the legislative process, only in reference to the PNV amendment with which, in his opinion, they intend to replace the parliamentary monarchy with a confederal republic.
Tamames will then ignore that this amendment has no prospect of prospering, since the PSOE and the PP have agreed to limit the reform to changing the term “persons with disabilities” to “disabled”, and that there are other amendments registered, such as one of Citizens to recentralize health and education.
Along the same lines of accusing the pro-independence parties of wanting to modify the constitutional “indissoluble unity of the Spanish nation”, the candidate for president sees these political formations overrepresented in parliament.
He will propose that the electoral legislation be modified “so that the generality of the Spanish people is the one that safeguards the future of Spain”, without going into details.
division of powers
He will accuse Sánchez of practicing the “command and command” policy, against the division of powers: “From Moncloa you have done the unimaginable and at any price to control” the General Courts, the Constitutional Court and the General Council of Power Judicial.
“Maybe a new government has to consider the designation of Supreme Court and Constitutional Court magistrates for life”, will be one of his proposals.
Another accusation from Tamames to Sánchez will be his abuse of the decree-law, for which “an extraordinary instrument has become somewhat more than normal”, despite the fact that it reduces or suppresses parliamentary debate, “one of the problems of our current political life.
He will criticize several reforms of the Criminal Code of this legislature, such as those of sedition or the only yes is yes, which in his opinion are blurs that do not prevent Spain from having “an exemplary criminal system among the best in the world.”
Economy
The candidate proposed by Vox believes that “the Ministry of Labor intends to govern the unions”, and even points out that its head, Yolanda Díaz, practices a “vertical unionism” like that of Francoism.
Specifically, he will criticize the rise in the minimum wage because it supposes “a blow to the waterline of almost all small and medium-sized businesses” and attacks the “attempt” to cap the price of basic food products in the shopping basket, for approaching “the idea of rationing by the Government”, as in the Venezuelan “Chavista regime”.
It will detail various macroeconomic data to show an “unbalanced and contradictory” Spanish economic situation, with a gross product that has not yet reached its pre-pandemic level and the unemployment rate is still high.
He will delve into one of his main fields of study in his long academic life: agrarian and industrial structures.
On several pages of his draft speech he will urge agro-industrial innovation, and at that point he will accuse the Government of “blaming the Ibex 35”, when these companies “have done things more or less well”.
Demography
Tamames will maintain that the Government is “entertained with the issue of emptied Spain”, without looking at the “very low fertility” as a “great factor” of that depopulation.
“A part of radical feminism is against a higher birth rate,” she will argue.
Regarding immigration, he will only indicate that the Mediterranean “cannot continue to be the burial ground for thousands and thousands of shipwrecked” and he will lament the “legislative laziness” of the European Union and the “lack of reaction” of the Government of Sánchez.
Welfare state
“A refoundation of public health seems necessary,” Tamames will preach after analyzing dysfunctions in the health system, in the same way that he will close his negative analysis of school, university and scientific education: “It is clear that a new government will have to change many things in the educational area.
It will analyze the shortage and cost of housing to conclude that there is no “magic solution”, but there is a social housing plan.
Foreign policy
Morocco and Gibraltar will focus the foreign policy of the candidate, to accuse Sánchez of insufficient explanations for the change of position on Western Sahara and defend “the rationality of returning” Spanish sovereignty over the rock, in a claim that he understands to be the responsibility of the Union European Union as a whole, why extinguish this “colony”.
Ecology
Several pages of the draft are devoted to environmental policy, with diagnoses and recipes especially on water and forests.
It will propose increasing the regeneration of wastewater and the desalination of seawater, in addition to giving more powers to the water regulatory council over the Tajo-Segura aqueduct and “rethinking” a transfer of the Ebro.
A body of ecological volunteers to care more for the forests is another of his original proposals.
his last tribute
Among his arguments to accept the candidacy, Tamames will reel off many personal issues.
He will recall his anti-Franco experiences in detail, and even the dedication of his parliamentary speech in 2023 will be in memory of his “friends” fellow prisoners in 1956.
“Because of the obligation I felt to personally pay my last tribute to the defense of the current and future interests of Spain”, he will justify his acceptance, and will review his curriculum of service to the public administration for seven decades.
In fact, he will admit that the motion of censure is for him “one of the last sequences of the script itself” of his life.