Spain gets a Socialist prime minister after Rajoy loses key vote
Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez willbecomespain’snewprime minister after a no-confidence vote yesterday in parliament unseated Mariano Rajoy’s conservative government. He came in vowing to address the “social emergencies” of the country’s citizens after years of austerity measures.
Mr Sanchez, until now the head of Spain’s largest opposition party, could be sworn in by King Felipe VI as early as today and will appoint his cabinet over the coming days.
The 46-year-old takes the helm of the eurozone’s fourthlargest economy at a time when the European Union has to resolve numerous problems, including the UK’S impending departure from the bloc and political tensions over the tens of thousands of migrants who are still entering the continent from North Africa.
On the domestic front, Mr Sanchez will head a minority government that will need to negotiate potentially difficult deals with other parties to get its legislation passed.
To prevent a power vacuum after a no-confidence motion, Spanish law makes the motion’s author – in this case, Mr Sanchez – the country’s new leader as soon as the king swears him in.
The Madrid stock exchange was up 2 per cent after Mr Sanchez won the vote and earned a standing ovation from his party’s MPS.
The end of Mr Rajoy’s more than six-year reign as prime minister was the first oustingof a serving leader by parliament in Spain’s four decades of democracy.
It also was a rare success for a centre-left party in Europe in recent times. Mr Sanchez and his party are staunch supporters of the EU and the euro currency shared by 19 EU nations.
In a brief speech before the vote, Mr Rajoy told lawmakers “it has been an honor to leave Spain better than I found it”.
He then shook hands with Mr Sanchez after the result was announced.
Mr Rajoy has been in power since December 2011, successfully steering Spain out of its worst economic crisis in decades during the eurozone debt crisis and achieving some of the strongest economic growth in Europe.
Last year, gross domestic product growth reached 3.1 per cent.
But the reputation of Mr Rajoy’s Popular Party was badly damaged by a court verdict last week that identified it as a beneficiary of a large kickbacks-for-contracts scheme.
Mr Sanchez saw that as his opening and managed to muster enough support from smaller parties to send him to La Moncloa palace, the seat of government in Madrid.
Mr Sanchez, who will be Spain’s seventh prime minister since the country’s return to democracy in the late 1970s, arrives in power after a spectacular turnaround in his political fortunes.
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