A little after 11.30h this morning a No-Confidence Motion was carried with a parliamentary majority, bringing Mariano’s Premiership to an end and ushering in Pedro Sánchez’s.
The voting offered no surprises after yesterday’s debates, except for one Conservative MP who initially voted in favour before, with a red face, correcting his vote, to general chuckling around the House.
Mariano Rajoy was brought down owing to the rampant corruption in his party, but more specifically to the court sentence on the 28th of May, condemning ex-PP members to decades in prison, in some cases. It also confirmed the existence of B-accountancy (hidden) within the party.
With 180 votes in favour, 169 against and one abstention, the motion was carried, giving the Premiership to the socialist leader, Pedro Sánchez.
The outgoing government had used scare tactics extensively, pointing to the stock-market turmoil and rising interest rates on Government bonds – something that was being caused by the situation in Italy; not by the situation in Spain – as proven by today’s stock-market results.
The PP Spokesman, Sr. Hernandez, called the no-confidence motion a “fraud” and accused the socialists of getting into bed with the very parties that threaten to destroy national unity (separatists), forgetting, it seems, that his party counted on those very same parties to obtain the Parliamentary House Presidency seat (equivalent to the Speaker in the UK Parliament).
The fact is that the PSOE Government has only 85 seats in a 351-seat Lower House, and will depend heavily on consensus for survival; a consensus the PP had plainly lost with not one party in the house supporting them.
Despite the future being far from certain, a breath of optimism was palpable in the Parliament.
What is left now will be a struggle without quarter between the two right-wing parties, the PP and Ciudadanos, which even in their combined rejection of the no-confidence vote, tore into each other when each had the floor during the session.
How long will the Sánchez Government last? At the moment, it might last the year, depending on how much ground he is willing to cede to the autonomous parties that are demanding greater autonomy and even independence.
The incoming government has accepted the outgoing ones 2018 budget, as it is far to late to change – it should have been passed last year but the Rajoy Government was incapable of obtaining sufficient backing until only two days ago.
The new Government also comes to power in a moment of global crisis, fruit of looming trade wars and rising energy costs, both of which have arguably been caused by the Trump Administration.
Gone are the days of the virtually the zero-percent, interest rates and cheap petroleum prices, meaning that Spanish national growth will slow or even turn – something that the outgoing government is bound to lay at the new government’s door.
(News: Spain)