The newly-elected Bureau of the Parliament of Catalonia held its first meeting this Wednesday morning. The speaker of the chamber, Josep Rull, has informed the rest of the members of the parliamentary governance organ that he will hold consultations with the parliamentary parties on Tuesday, June 18th and Wednesday, June 19th to propose a candidate for investiture as Catalan president, which is expected to be Salvador Illa or Carles Puigdemont. Rull will meet on Tuesday with the PP, Vox, Comuns Sumar, the CUP and the Catalan Alliance (not necessarily in that order), while on Wednesday he will meet with the PSC, Junts+ and ERC, according to parliamentary sources. On Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, Josep Rull will communicate to the general public the decision on who he proposes as candidate for the investiture, and will then call the plenary session for Tuesday, June 25th. In fact, it must be called no later than Thursday 20th because it must be done 48 working hours before it is due, and June 24th is a public holiday.
The "equivalent act" scenario: no candidate for the investiture, for now
However, if none of the candidates announce their intention to present themselves for investiture as president at the parliamentary session on June 25th, one of the scenarios is for the speaker Rull to convoke an act equivalent to a failed investiture. In this instance, there would be no candidate for the investiture in a session to be held on the 25th. To explain this mechanism, it is necessary to go back to the ban on office-holding imposed on president Quim Torra. The speaker of Parliament at the time, Roger Torrent, acknowledged that there was no candidate for an investiture with enough support and formally communicated to the plenary the activation of an "act equivalent to a failed investiture". This procedure simulates the fact that no one has been approved in an investiture vote and thus allows the activation of the two-month countdown before new elections are automatically called, as contemplated in the Catalan chamber's regulations. Normally, this countdown is launched if the candidate to be elected president of the Generalitat does not succeed in the first investiture plenary.
If this formula were to be chosen, Rull could communicate on Wednesday or Thursday of next week that there is no candidate for the investiture and, likewise, call the plenary for Tuesday, June 25th, formally communicating the holding of the "equivalent act". This would set in motion the countdown to avoid a repeat election: a successful investiture plenum would then have to be held before August 25th. On the other hand, if candidates wish to submit to the investiture, what part can the speaker of Parliament play in choosing one? The speaker would have to nominate whomever he believed to have the most support. If only one candidate expressed a desire to present himself at the investiture, that criterion would also prevail. If neither of them did, he could be leaning toward the formula for the equivalent of a failed investiture.
The first investiture vote, on June 26th
In any case, the Bureau has agreed that the investiture plenum on June 25th will operate as follows: it would begin with an initial speech by the candidate to preside over the Generalitat, followed in the afternoon by speeches from the other parliamentary groups. Given that there would be eight speaking turns, some parties might have to wait until the the morning of Wednesday, June 26th, when the first investiture vote would take place. Forty-eight hours later, there would be a second vote if the first one was unsuccessful - that is, on Friday, June 28th.