Spain: Socialist Party in crisis as right-wing government is formed
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After over 315 days of political stalemate, the rightwing Partido Popular [PP] has regained control in Spain with the tacit support of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party [PSOE]. The vote to form the new gov ernment took place in two stages, the first on Oct. 27 and the second on Oct. 29, just days before the Oct. 31 deadline that would have resulted in a mandato ry and unprecedented third national election in one year.
In the first vote, the PP needed an absolute majority, which it and its coalition partners did not have. In the second vote, they needed a majority of those voting. After an internal crisis and the ouster of their leader, the socialists voted to abstain in the second vote, thus allowing the Partido Popular to form the government.
The second vote was 170 in favor, including 137 votes from the PP, 32 votes from its coalition partner Ciudadanos, and one vote from the regional Canarias party. As planned, 68 Socialists abstained while 111 voted against, including all representatives from Podemos and all the representatives from the Cata lan Socialist Party (PSC), which is affiliated with the PSOE. Shortly before the vote, the former General Secretary of the PSOE, Pedro Sanchez, resigned his seat in the Cortes rather than support the PP.
The PP is now free to push through the austerity plan demanded by the European Union [EU], which states that Spain must cut its budget deficit to meet EU targets. To do so will require more cuts to social services and education.
The EU is also demanding further consolidation of the Spanish banking system and the elimination of certain labor laws that protect Spanish workers. These will not be easy goals to accomplish, given the 4 SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2016 broken two-plus party system in Spain.
Mariano Rajoy, the leader of the PP and the person who was acting president during the last 10 months, has promised to compromise and negotiate with the other parties in the Cortes. In the past, he has shown little interest in compromise and he has pushed through austerity measures demanded by the EU with an iron resolve. The PP also plans on “revising” the pension system, but has presented no detailed plans on how it intends to do so.
The new government faces a resurgent Catalan in dependence movement. The Catalan government plans to hold a referendum on independence in 2017. The left-populist party Podemos backs the referen dum, as does a broad spectrum of the Catalan parties, from left to right. In September, over 800,000 Cata lans marched in favor of independence.
An internal crisis within the PSOE, the Spanish So cialist Workers Party, provided the PP with the op portunity it needed. On Oct. 1 the general secretary (Left) Pablo Iglesias, general secretary of Podemos.
of the PSOE, Pedro Sanchez, was forced to resign by the party’s federal (national) committee. Sanchez had refused to abstain on any votes to install a PP gov ernment. While the majority of the federal commit tee and the national leadership of the PSOE wanted to compromise (read: capitulate) with the PP, Sanchez still retained significant support. In all, 133 members of the Federal Committee voted against his proposal to hold internal party elections for the post of gen eral secretary while 109 members voted in favor of his proposal. The majority feared that a new election would result in continued losses for the PSOE.
After resigning his seat in congress on the eve of the investiture vote, Sanchez said he would get in his car and travel the country talking with party activists. It is clear to all observers in Spain that the PSOE is now in crisis and is split at least three ways. First, the Cata lan Socialist Party has broken from the PSOE over its support for the PP and the issue of Catalan indepen dence. Second, there is a split within the Federal Com mittee. Third, there is a clear split between the party activists, most of whom oppose any kind of support for the PP, and the party leadership.
The PSOE has little internal party democracy and has not had party primaries to select candidates and leaders. A person becomes a candidate or part of the leadership by being recruited by the existing lead ers, as in a corporate board of directors. The Span ish refer to the leadership as the “nomenclatura,” a word that was once popular in the Soviet Union to denote the ruling bureaucratic layer. The nomencla tura has acted as a kind of top-down management of (continued on page 11, in “British Columbia survey shows religion is on decline”)