This past Sunday the Socialist Party of Spain (PSOE) finally
agreed to step aside and let stand-in
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his
Popular Party (PP) go back to running the country after a ten month long
political impasse.
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While the decision the PSOE made to stand aside and accede
defeat wasn’t popular with the left-leaning Spaniards the political deadlock
finally ending can only be good for the country. Rajoy is expected to take the
helm of the country some time next month. He will be much less powerful this
time around however.
Rajoy failed to secure a majority number of seats in the
election from last December and the June election of this year; meaning that
the PP will only control 137 seats out of the 350 seats available in Spanish
parliament.
As such Rajoy will need to negotiate most of his political
decisions with the other people in parliament with him. Watering down Rajoy’s
power was one of the few positive things that the PSOE took from their move;
arguing that it would be better to end the deadlock and stop the PP in
parliament when needed than keep the impasse going for a third election.
Rajoy is expected to meet with King Felipe before two
additional rounds of Congress voting will see the Popular Party reinstated as
the Spanish governing party by the end of next week.
It’s somewhat of a “tradition” in Spain that the Popular
Party and the PSOE trade power as the country swings from left to right. The
recent recessions and cost of living of the country saw the emergence of two additional smaller
parties that messed up this delicate balance. They were the Podemos party of
the far left and the centrist Cíudadanos party. Both of these parties took some
votes from both of the major parties but the PSOE in particular were badly hit.
There’s no doubt that the new leader of the PSOE Javier
Fernandez must have had trouble choosing to stand aside. Even so he said that
his decision was the lesser of two evils and the Spanish public are in
agreement, along with the press and economists who are happy to finally see the
political disputes of the past year come to an end.
The PSOE saw that 139 regional voters agreed to their
decision to lift their veto to allow the PP to form a government while 96 were
against it. This shows that there is still a pretty big divide in the party and
that Rajoy will not find it so easy to run the country during his second term
at the helm.
Fernando Vallespin; politics professor with the Autonomous
University of Madrid said that it is unprecedented for a Spanish government to
have such a small amount of parliamentary support. He added that Rajoy will
most likely need to negotiate any laws he tries to introduce.
With the new government finally being formed Spain will continue to be a better place to live.
With the new government finally being formed Spain will continue to be a better place to live.
