Spain’s ruling Socialists were yesterday weighing options for forming a new government after they emerged as the biggest party, but fell short of a majority following a national election that produced a deeply fragmented parliament.
Playing down talk of possible coalition options, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo said that the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) would try to govern alone, while party president Cristina Narbona said it was in no hurry to decide.
“The Socialists will try to govern on their own,” Calvo said in an interview on Cadena Ser radio. “We have more than enough [votes] to steer this ship along the course it must follow.”
Photo: Bloomberg
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, whose party celebrated into the small hours after increasing their representation in Sunday’s election to 123 seats from 84, declined to comment ahead of a strategy meeting yesterday afternoon.
If he does seek a coalition partner, he could opt for a complex alliance with fellow leftists Podemos that would likely require support from at least one Catalan separatist lawmaker, or he could risk upsetting his grassroots supporters by joining forces across the political divide with center-right Ciudadanos.
Any coalition talks could take weeks or months and might end in deadlock, plunging Europe’s fifth-largest economy into a new period of uncertainty as the continent wrestles with the complexities of Brexit and other challenges.
Concerns at home and abroad that Vox, a newcomer far-right party, would gain a share of power unprecedented since Spain’s return to democracy in the 1970s failed to materialize. It won 24 seats, fewer than expected, and split the right-wing vote.
For many observers, the Podemos option appears Sanchez’s likelier path, even with the two parties 11 seats short of a majority. Podemos Secretary-General Pablo Iglesais said he would happily enter a coalition.
“The chances of [Sanchez] getting a government [with Podemos are] at 90 percent, or better, but the chances of him passing the budget are 40:60,” IESE business school economics professor Javier Diaz-Gimenez said.
Madrid’s Carlos III University political science professor Pablo Simon said he expected no deal on a government before next month’s European Parliament elections.
Vox, the first party of that political hue to sit in parliament in significant numbers since late dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, splintered the right-wing vote to leave the mainstream conservative People’s Party (PP) languishing on just 66 seats, its worst result since the early 1980s.
The PP, along with the Socialists, had dominated the political landscape since Franco’s death.
“It’s clear that the fragmentation of the right has hurt the PP most, and it has paid the price for its corruption scandals,” ONEtoONE investment bank chief executive Enrique Quemada said.
Sanchez took office in June last year after the then-governing PP lost a confidence vote called over the involvement of party members in corruption.
He called Sunday’s election when his budget failed to get through parliament after Catalan separatists refused to back it.
If Sanchez teams up with Podemos, he would probably also need to cut another deal with the Catalans to secure an absolute majority.
While Sanchez has ruled out any negotiations on Catalan independence, any deal with the separatists would rake over the coals of the most divisive topic of an often tense election campaign that was dominated by issues of national identity.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS