Today saw the investiture of the Andalusian Parliament. Not the votes for the President of the Junta de Andalucia which takes place on Monday, and which looks likely to leave Andalusia rudderless.
In brief, the President of the Junta is the executive, the Parliament is the legislative.
109 MP’s from five different parties turned up today to take their seats. For the first time anywhere in Spain, MP’s from the new Podemos and Cuidadanos parties took their seats. All was cordial and friendly. Juan Pablo Durán (PSOE) was voted in as President of the Parliament, and the three Vice Presidencies were distributed amongst the PSOE, the PP and Podemos. It wasn’t that easy really, as Cuidadanos and Podemos abstained on all votes, leaving the PP and the PSOE to fight it out amongst themselves.
Then it came to the election of the seven MP’s who will sit at the Mesa, and things got Nasty.
It seems that the Law controlling the make up of the Mesa, the council of Parliament, is one of those Laws that while amazingly detailed and complicated, can still be interpreted as you want to.
So the PSOE said that the laws says all parties in Parliament must be represented on the Mesa, and doled out the seven seats accordingly – they voted that they got three and everyone else got one.
But the PP says that no, the law says all parties must be represented proportionally, which means the PP should get two seats, which would have left IU (the smallest party) out in the cold.
But since Podemos and Cuidadanos are abstaining from all votes, the PP lost and only got one seat.
Which prompted their spokesman to get into a hell of a slanging match with the President of the Parliament, the storming out of the PP High Command, and the subsequent declaration by the PP that they will be asking the Constitutional Court to suspend the Parliament and make a ruling.
“How can the PP, with 33 MP’s, have the same percentage of representation on the Mesa as the IU, with just 5 MPs?” demanded to know the PP.
It’s all looking very dodgy for Monday’s vote on Susana Diaz…