Few expectations in a general policy debate in an electoral key

PalmaThe President of the Government, Marga Prohens, called the general policy debate this Tuesday, the 20th, without much ceremony. While she usually summoned the parliamentary groups to announce the date to them, on this occasion she limited herself to communicating it through a letter addressed to the President of the Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne. Although general policy debates serve to examine the Executive's action, in which it usually announces measures to address structural issues, on this occasion the opposition parties have few expectations due to the fact that the plenary session is too close to the general election campaign.

The spokesperson for MÉS per Mallorca, Lluís Apesteguia, has expressed that he has "little hope" and expects a parliamentary debate "tinged with electoralism" and focused on Madrid: "There will be more talk about [Pedro] Sánchez and [Alberto Núñez] Feijóo". After the first vice-president, Antoni Costa, asserted last Friday that housing will be one of the central topics of the debate, Apesteguia predicted: "If two years ago Prohens discovered that the Balearic Islands were saturated and last year the demographic challenge, we suppose that this year she will discover that we have a housing problem".

In this regard, he recalled the Government's "non-policies" regarding housing and warned that it "will continue to bet on incentivizing speculation, construction, and the real estate market, without taking into account that it is out of control and does not serve Balearic society".

The deputy general secretary of the PSIB and candidate of the party for the regional elections, Rosario Sánchez, has accused Prohens of facing this debate with a "crisis of credibility" due to the failure to fulfill her promises. The socialist has assured that there is an "immense difference" between what the PP announces and what it does, and has considered that Prohens arrives at the debate without having provided solutions to the citizens' problems. Thus, she has insisted again that the popular [party member] has not wanted to apply the cap on rental prices that state legislation allows. In the next elections, she warned, two different political models will face each other: that of the PP, which, in her opinion, bets on privatization, and the socialist one, based on the defense of labor rights, healthcare, public education, and equal opportunities.

The PP says that Prohens "has done her homework"

For his part, the PP spokesperson in Parliament, Sebastià Sagreras, has highlighted that Prohens "has done her homework" and with "a high level of compliance with the electoral program", and "the defense of the values and principles and the red lines" of her party.