The PP prepares its conquest of the Senate with an absolute majority, Presidency and veto power

He has secured four of the seven positions on the Board and will review the formation of the nationalist groups

MADRID, 13 Ago. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Senate of the XV Legislature is constituted this Thursday after the general elections of July 23 and the PP is preparing to assert an absolute majority of up to 143 senators that will allow it to take over the Presidency of the Chamber, control the Senate Table and, therefore, condition the processing of the laws that arrive from Congress, being able to delay, modify and even veto them.

The session will begin at 10 a.m. and will follow the usual agenda: opening, organization of an old table, voting to elect the new Table and inauguration of the senators, something that usually generates controversy due to the formula used by some of them to swear or promise the position.

In this first decision, the 'popular' will assert their absolute majority to win the Presidency of the Senate, although for the moment the name they will propose for the vote on Thursday is unknown.

Among the senators that the PP has in the new Legislature, elected on 23J and by regional designation, names stand out such as the vice-secretary for Regional Coordination, Pedro Rollán --the senator with the most votes--; the former president of the Galician Parliament, Pilar Rojo; the former president of Congress, Luisa Fernández Rudi; or the former leader of the Andalusian PP, Javier Arenas, among others.

In any case, it will have to be the leadership of the party that decides the name of the person who occupies the Presidency of the Senate, which is supposed to be the fourth institution of the State.

With its 143 seats, the 'popular' have secured another three more positions in the Senate Table (one Vice-Presidency and two Secretaries), so together with the Presidency, they will have a comfortable absolute majority in this governing body of the Chamber High, four votes out of seven.

He even has room to offer a position on the Senate Table to a minority with a view to securing votes for the 'battle' of the Congress Table, which will be decided that same Thursday morning, or for a future investiture.

The political importance of the Senate has always been relative. It does not intervene in the election of the president of the Government and it is not decisive in the elaboration of the laws, but it can delay and veto the regulations that come to it from Congress.

That is, when a law is approved in Congress, it is sent to the Senate to be validated, modified or vetoed. With its absolute majority in the Senate, Feijóo's PP will be able to put an Executive of Sánchez in a bind, since they will be able to delay the processing of laws. And if they reject a law, it will force the corresponding government to gather an absolute majority of yeses in Congress to lift that veto.

In addition, it will have more room to register questions to the Government in control sessions, while it will be able to fail Sánchez's ministers with their absolute majority, a parliamentary mechanism that opposition groups use above all in Congress.

But one of the main assets of the PP if Sánchez governs, once the Parliament is constituted, will be the possibility of giving the green light to investigative commissions in the Senate, thanks to the majority that it will have in the Chamber Table.

In this Legislature, the PP did not have that power and, for example, the majority that the PSOE and PNV had in the Senate Board decided not to admit to processing the PP's request to create a parliamentary investigation commission in the Upper House on alleged irregularities of the PSPV in the framework of the so-called 'Azud case'. His intention then was that the former president of the Generalitat and general secretary of the Valencian socialists, Ximo Puig, would be the first to appear.

Once the Senate is constituted this Thursday, the term to form the parliamentary groups will start, for which the Regulation requires adding ten components. Loans are allowed to reach that minimum figure, but the senators who remain can never be less than six. And the PP, with its absolute majority in the Table, will be the supervisor of that process.

Achieving a parliamentary group means having representation in all the Senate bodies, spokespersons and intervention and initiative shifts, as well as more financial resources and human and material resources.

From the outset, the PP, the PSOE and ERC-Bildu, who presented themselves in a coalition in the Upper House, are the only ones that have their own guaranteed group, but the rest of the formations are obliged to come to terms with other parties and even to borrow senators to reach the required ten.

In the absence of senators from any community being appointed, the Senate chamber will be made up of fifteen political parties: PP (143), PSOE (92), ERC (6), Bildu (5), PNV (5), Junts ( 3), Vox (3), ASG (1), AHI (1), UPN (1), Compromís (1), Más Madrid (1), Geroa Bai (1), BNG (1), Canarian Coalition (1) .

The Basque nationalists of the PNV, with five, and the Catalan separatists of Junts, with three, have the possibility of joining together and adding Geroa Bai and BNG to get the ten seats needed to form their own group.

Another possibility is that, within the negotiations for the investiture, the PNV and Geroa Bai have help from other formations, such as the PSOE, to achieve their own parliamentary group.

The rest of the parties find it more difficult to form an alliance and could end up in a mixed group that includes Vox, UPN, ASG, AHI, CC and Sumar (Compromís and Más Madrid), although they will seek the maximum number of supports to ensure the advantages that having own group.