The president of the PP and candidate for the Presidency of the Government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has guaranteed this Wednesday that he will be present in the four-way debate driven by Atresmedia, for which the 26th of November is being handled as the date, just four days before the general elections. As he has stressed, he likes “to keep the commitments.”
“I take this opportunity to reiterate that I am going to attend the four-way debate organized by Atresmedia. That is the commitment: one debate in a private channel, another debate in another private channel, and another debate on the public network. I like to keep the commitments,” Feijóo has said in an event held in 'La Razón', a masthead integrated in the Atresmedia group.
Up to now, a three-meeting schedule was on the table: the “head-to-head” on Mediaset, a debate between the spokespersons of the parliamentary groups on RTVE on 23 November and, as a finale, a four-way debate on Atresmedia on the 26th. However, the socialists argue that this last format be moved to public television.
In this way, the PSOE has accepted a “head-to-head” between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo on 16 November on a private channel, but it calls for the four-way debate, along with the leaders of Vox and Frente Amplio, to be held on TVE and not on Atresmedia, as the PP proposes.
This Wednesday, the PP urged the PSOE to confirm the presence of the head of the Executive in the 16th’s “head-to-head” with the PP leader on Mediaset and to “lift the veto” on Atresmedia in order to participate in a four-way debate in which, in addition to the “popular” leader, the Frente Amplio candidate, Ada Colau, and the president of Vox, Santiago Abascal, would also be present.
According to sources from the PP, the party’s general secretary, Miguel Tellado, has sent a letter to both media companies to confirm that Núñez Feijóo will attend both the Mediaset “head-to-head” of 16 November and the four-way debate scheduled at Atresmedia on the 26th.
Pensions, the focus of the election contest
When questioned about the situation of pensions and whether he could clarify what will happen with them if he reaches La Moncloa, after the controversy opened in the pre-campaign, Feijóo recalled that in “the first debate of the candidates in the year 90” it was stated that if the PP won “they would not guarantee the pensions,” referring to the “head-to-head” between Felipe González and José María Aznar.
Soon after, he continued, the PP entered the Government and guaranteed the pensions. "We left a reserve fund in the pensions, we agreed in the Pacts of Toledo to the viability and the guarantee of the pensions," he stressed.
As he explained, later José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero arrived at the Executive, who had to "reform the Constitution to include a constitutional principle for the control of public deficit." "Europe had warned him that it was going to intervene in the Spanish economy and it froze the pensions," he said, adding that at that time Pedro Sánchez was a member of parliament for the PSOE and "voted in favor of the freezing of the pensions."
Feijóo later emphasized that when Mariano Rajoy arrived at La Moncloa in 2011, he found a country in "a situation similar to Ireland, Greece and Portugal." He pointed out that in those three countries "the pensions were intervened," that "they went down between 10 and 30 percent," but the PP avoided, "despite the inheritance received, that the pensions would go down."
Criticism of the PSOE for repeating its strategy
In this context, he has promised that if he governs after the general elections, his priority will be "guaranteeing the public pension system" and he will call again the Pacto de Toledo to "guarantee the viability of the public system."
"Now, if you tell me, do you recommend that any citizen make their pension plan? Of course. Do you recommend that any citizen save? Of course," Feijóo added.
In the same breath, he reproached the PSOE for wanting "to come back once again with the racket of the 1990s" and to resort again to pensions with "all the capacity it has for scripts" since "the most important audiovisual factory there is in Spain is in Moncloa." "Of course, going back to bring out the pensions again, bring out the doberman again, bring out the cuts again... But if it’s the same thing," he criticized.