Oviedo (EFE) to achieve it with an absolute majority and in the first vote.
In a Chamber made up of 45 deputies, Barbón has obtained the support of the 19 of the Socialist Group, of the three already committed by IU-Call for Asturias and that of the only deputy of Podemos, Covadonga Tomé, who until today kept the mystery .
With a regulation that only allows to support or abstain when voting for the investiture of the president, if the purple deputy had not supported the socialist candidate, Barbón’s re-election would have been delayed until next Friday, in a second vote in which he would only have needed simple majority to get it.
Tomé, confronted with the regional and national leadership of the purple formation, had been conditioning his support for Barbón on the formation of a tripartite government of socialists, IU and Podemos, something in which the acting president has not given his arm to twist.
The conditioned yes of Podemos
The purple deputy has justified her support in the need to prevent “the PP from claiming victory for having broken the progressive majority” and to prevent Barbón from using his abstention “as an excuse to justify that he is obliged to come to terms with the right”.
Tomé had also made her vote subject to a consultation called by herself among Podemos militants outside of another held last week by the regional leadership -with which she has been in confrontation for months- and whose result was also favorable to the investiture of Barbon.
As in recent weeks, the purple deputy has returned today to demand a tripartite government of progress, although Barbón has been “very clear” in assuring that the internal situation that Podemos is experiencing cannot provide stability to the future regional Executive.
Negotiation for a coalition government
Apart from the investiture, PSOE and IU-Convocatoria por Asturias are holding open negotiations regarding the formation of a coalition government that Barbón intends to take office on August 1.
In his inauguration speech, Barbón has proposed an Asturias “safe from political involution” and has defended that the understanding he seeks with IU-Call for Asturias to form a “strong, stable and progressive government” is compatible with a ” permanent willingness to dialogue” with other parliamentary groups.
In this regard, the spokesman for IU-Convocatoria por Asturias, Ovidio Zapico, has urged Barbón to complete the negotiation as soon as possible to form an Executive “that is not only progressive unity, but also reformist”, a term that Barbón has assumed before to give a “yes I do” to this “marriage of convenience”.
Stability and certainty is what citizens and businessmen are demanding for this legislature, stated Barbón, who has recognized that this agreement can be achieved, while Zapico has insisted that the IU is not a danger for the Constitution or for the coexistence
Asturias, an island of the left
The popular spokesman, Diego Canga, who two weeks ago resigned from the investiture for not having the necessary support to move it forward, has once again asked Barbón not to agree with the IU and prevent Asturias from being “an island of leftists within of a country that has turned towards the center right”.
“You have two options: lean to the left or take advantage of the bridges that the PP has built for you, which I think the majority of Asturias wants,” said the popular candidate after proposing “a sincere offer of pacts” in demographic matters, employment, attention to the elderly, health and reduction of bureaucracy.
He has stressed that he does not understand his commitment to the IU, because arithmetic allows him to govern alone, before admitting that the PP is far from the PSOE, but “very far” from the coalition, so a coalition government will make the possibility difficult. to reach agreements.
Willingness to dialogue
“It is necessary to reach points of agreement that serve everyone, great State agreements that remain engraved on stone,” stated Barbón, who has assured that the fact that there is a progressive and reformist unity government “does not disavow the understanding with the PP”.
Barbón has acknowledged that he liked the tone of the popular spokesperson but has also shown “serious doubts” that the offer launched to govern with budgetary pacts would have had any route since in the last four years the PP voted against all the accounts autonomous.
He has admitted that he would have liked to govern alone, but that the problem does not lie in guaranteeing his inauguration as president today, but in giving stability to a government for the next four years in which he intends to consolidate Asturias at the forefront of the green economy , make the rural environment the protagonist of change, improve the welfare state, defend equality and pride of identity.
Bleach Vox
The president has reiterated that he will maintain his position of not whitewashing Vox politically and to continue with zero contacts with the extreme right, to whose spokesperson, Carolina López, he has suggested that if he wants to be consistent in his criticism of public aid, return what receives his parliamentary group.
The latter, for its part, has warned that Vox, the third parliamentary force, “has come to stay” and has accused Barbón of “contempting his 50,000 voters for having excluded the formation from any negotiation despite being a party that “defends democracy, the unity of Spain and the real equality of all people.” EFE