PP asks Pedro Sánchez to propose another presidential candidate

The Secretary General of the right-wing People’s Party, Teodoro García Egea, said that "the only thing blocking" Spanish democracy is Pedro Sánchez because, he says, no one trusts the Socialist leader. 

For this reason, he has requested that Sánchez step aside and propose another name in the second round of debates to name a Spanish president that may serve to resolve the current political deadlock. 

Egea went a step further again, calling for a "constitutionalist alternative" from the Spanish Socialists if they are not able to invest their candidate; namely, to bring the right-wing People’s Party and Ciutadans into the equation to try to invest a candidate of their own as president. Such an investiture require the abstention of the rest of the parties in the Spanish Congress, including the Socialists.

“If [Pedro Sánchez] does not know how to gain trust, let another candidate of another party be allowed to bring together a majority in the parliament, because [Sánchez] is the element blocking Spanish democracy," Egea said. 

The People’s Party number two says they have "given a lesson to the left by agreeing on different government formulas.” The conservative PP remains anchored to the rejection of Pedro Sánchez as Spanish president.

"The dilemma is not Pedro Sánchez or elections, the issue can be resolved by promoting another candidature, or even with a constitutional alliance of the People’s Party and Ciutadans, with the abstention of the rest of the groups, including the PSOE," he has proposed.

For their part, Ciutadans did not back the calls for Sánchez to step aside. "The question is whether they can come to an agreement on the distribution of ministries," sources from the party of Albert Rivera say, that also consider any other proposal that is made is "for want of distracting."

García Ejea remarked that "nobody trusts" Sánchez, "not even Pablo Iglesias," the leader of left-wing Unidas Podemos, who the Socialists failed to make a deal with in the first round of presidential investiture. 

"Pedro Sánchez has already chosen his partners; the pro-independence Catalans and the extreme left," he criticized. He also charged against a possible abstention from pro-independence Esquerra Republicana and said he was worried that the "moderate" of a government would be Gabriel Rufián.