Feijóo: safe hands, a boring empty signifier or the herald of far-right reactionary policies across Spain?
The convservative candidate for Prime Minister dodges questions on doing deals with Vox and whether or not Abascal would become Deputy Prime Minsiter.
Last night was PP leader Feijóo’s turn on the late-night chat show El Hormiguero. I was expecting him to display a certain degree of arrogance and to make a couple of gaffes after his performance at speeches over the past couple of days. He did neither. His rhetoric is more technical and formal, and he lacks energy and conviction compared to Sánchez, as well as the Prime Minister’s overt narcissism, but this is viewed as a favourable quality by many voters.
Some might say Feijóo represents safe, sensible, steady hands to manage the country after a volatile national period. Others might say he is another boring, dull Galician, a plodding provincial bank manager of sorts, Rajoy without the beard. That, at least, is the public image he tries to project.
He attempted to frame himself as the first country boy to become Prime Minister, a triumph of Spanish democracy and social mobility, but then lauded all his years living in the regional first minister’s palace in Galicia with fine views of the Cathedral in Santiago. He forgot to mention Spain’s first Prime Minister in the post-Franco period, Adolfo Suárez, who was born in the village of Cebreros, Ávila.
After not being able to do basic multiplication and accusing the PM of wanting to slay voters in the heat at the July election the day before, he managed not to make any gaffes last night, although there was some mumbling on Twitter about the price of a kilo of oranges: Feijóo said €0.12, which made everyone wonder where that bargain basement supermarket was. His supporters pressed later that he meant the wholesale price paid to farmers, not the price in supermarkets.
Feijóo said a few relevant things about Vox and dodged some others, but none of them really clarified what a PP-Vox coalition government would look like. He still hasn’t clarified his position on Vox, after two weeks of questions on the matter.
Asked if he would appoint Abascal (Vox) as Deputy Prime Minister, Feijóo didn’t deny it but replied that he already had in mind a name for a female Deputy Prime Minister. That is disingenuous because the Spanish system does not prevent several Deputy Prime Ministers from being appointed at the same time: Sánchez has had up to four. There is nothing to stop Feijóo from appointing the lady he has in mind and Abascal as deputies.
Asked about doing deals after the elections with Vox and having to choose between votes to get into power and ideological questions that might be red lines in any negotiations, Feijóo again deflected, switching back to Sánchez and switching out Vox for Basque separatist party Bildu: “I am not Pedro Sánchez, I am not going to a deal with Bildu”.
And asked about abortion for pregnant teenage girls, he said the parents and judges should decide; on euthanasia, he said bioethics committees should have the final word. He said he would ditch the Equality Ministry—new PP and Vox councils in different parts of the country have started getting rid of local equality departments already—but that he would personally take charge of that brief from the Prime Minister’s Office.
I thought the questioning by the chat show host was even worse than with Sánchez the previous night, but again many readers on Twitter disagreed, arguing a more normal conversation without the Prime Minister interrupting the host every few seconds.
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