Puigdemont to defend holding an agreed referendum on vote of confidence

Barcelona (CNA).- Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, will test this Thursday if he can still count upon the support of the majority of MPs in the 135-seat Parliament. Puigdemont, whose mandate started last January and was due to last for about 18 months, stated that he couldn’t “extend this term of office unjustifiably” and called for the Parliament to decide whether to restore confidence in the current Government or call for new elections. This decision was mainly driven by pro-independence CUP’s veto of the budget for 2016, which was considered one of the key points of the agreed roadmap between governing party ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and its partner CUP. For the President to pass the vote, he needs a simple majority, that is to say more ‘yeses’ than ‘noes’. The loss of the vote will not necessarily mean the dissolution of the Parliament but would kick off a process of investiture. 

This Wednesday, Puigdemont will hold a speech during which he is expected to call for an agreed referendum as the best way to culminate Catalonia’s pro-independence process.

The Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, assured that the Government faces the vote of confidence “with calmness” and “absolute consensus” on culminating Catalonia’s pro-independence process. Regarding the possibility of considering a unilateral referendum on independence, one of CUP’s main demands, and often seen as a ‘sine qua non’ condition for them to renew the confidence on Puigdemont, Munté didn’t go much further. She admitted that the Government is open to debate on all those instruments “which offer guarantees and which could be internationally approved”. 

What exactly is a vote of confidence?

The vote of confidence is a mechanism used for the President and the Government to verify if they can still count upon the political trust of the parliament which was received at the vote of investiture. It is regulated in the Catalan Statute of Autonomy and it is a common mechanism of the parliamentary system that exists in all countries with parliamentary regimes. In Catalonia’s case, the generic prevision is considered in the Statute and the specific regulations in article 44 of the 13/2008 law and in article 150 of the parliament’s regulation. 

The vote of confidence starts with an intervention from the Catalan President in which he does a programmatic exposition of his political goals for the rest of the term in office. Based on this exposition, the debate will take place and the renewal or not of the confidence in the president will occur. It is necessary to gain a simple majority. This means that in order to win the vote the President need mores ‘yeses’ than ‘noes’, and the number of abstentions is irrelevant. It is the same case for losing the vote: if the number of noes is superior to the number of yeses, regardless of the number of abstentions, the President will have lost the vote. 

Sometimes the loss of the vote is mistakenly associated with the dissolution of the Parliament, but it is not like this. To lose the vote of confidence means to kick off a process of investiture. There will only be a dissolution if by two months after the start of this process there is still no investiture. 

What led to it?

President Puigdemont announced in June that he would submit to a vote of confidence this September, after CUP’s veto of the budget for 2016. He considered then that the Government, led by pro-independence cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ with the support of CUP, didn’t have “guaranteed stability” and therefore couldn’t rule. “We can’t continue like this, we go nowhere with such a volatile basis”, Puigdemont stated. He admitted that the conditions which led to the agreement between the pro-independence forces after the 27-S elections had “changed” after CUP’s veto. “I trusted you and I defended you until the end” he said, addressing radical left pro-independence CUP and added that they had “let down the hopes of millions of people” by refusing to approve the budget.

Puigdemont, whose mandate started last January and was due to last for about 18 months, stated that he couldn’t “extend this term of office unjustifiably” and called for the Parliament to decide whether to restore confidence in the current government or call for new elections.,

The vote of confidence in the Catalan President in September may imply a renegotiation of the roadmap of the current government, which was expected to create the structures of an independent state within 18 months, and to then call constituent elections and draft a constitution for an independent Catalonia to be validated at the ballot box. This, of course, in the absence of an offer from Spain, in which case the Government would negotiate with Madrid a Scottish-style referendum.