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Spanish Socialists re-elect Pedro Sánchez to lead party Spanish Socialists re-elect Pedro Sánchez to lead party
(about 13 hours later)
Spain’s Socialists have chosen former leader and hardliner Pedro Sánchez to head the party again, a vote likely to make it harder for the ruling conservatives to secure the opposition support it needs in parliament to push through legislation. Pedro Sánchez has regained the leadership of Spain’s bitterly divided Socialist party seven months after being ousted in a coup that laid bare the faultlines within the PSOE and left its status as the main opposition party in jeopardy.
He has pledged to take a firm stand against the ruling minority People party’s market-friendly, deficit-tackling policies. On Sunday night, Sánchez took 50% of the vote, sailing past his main rival, Susana Díaz, the president of the PSOE stronghold of Andalucía, who took 40%. The former Basque president Patxi López finished third with 10%.
Sánchez will lead the Socialists further left and place them in direct opposition to the PP, increasing the possibility of a hung parliament over key reforms, something prime minister Mariano Rajoy has warned would trigger a new general election. The PSOE has been in the hands of a caretaker administration since October, when Sánchez stepped down after powerful factions within the party rebelled against his refusal to allow Mariano Rajoy’s conservative People’s party (PP) to form a government.
Sánchez resigned last October following a party revolt after he refused to abstain in a vote to break a nine-month deadlock and avoid a third election following two inconclusive votes. Despite huge internal and external pressure, Sánchez insisted the PP was simply too corrupt to run the country.
Once out, the Socialists stepped aside to allow Rajoy to reassume the PM’s office, a position that infuriated many on the left even though a repeat election would have meant more Socialist votes lost. Following his resignation, the PSOE abstained from Rajoy’s investiture debate, returning the PP to office and ending the 10-month political stalemate that had left Spain without a government after two inconclusive general elections.
The party has been left to prove its relevance in a split parliament that has pitched it between the right-wing policies of the PP and market friendly Ciudadanos on one hand and the hard-left Podemos on the other. Sánchez has spent the past few months criss-crossing the country, addressing the PSOE’s grassroots supporters and urging the party to move to the left.
The Socialists have suffered the fate of many of their leftwing peers across Europe as electioneering has been distorted by populist leaders from all sides of the political spectrum, leaving its base fractured and struggling for an identity. He hailed his victory as an example of “democracy, participation and transparency” and vowed to make the PSOE a credible winning party once again.
In Spain, part of that political sea change has been due to the arrival of the anti-austerity Podemos, which began as a grassroots movement against the PP’s deficit-fighting policies during the prolonged economic crisis. “To the millions of progressives who may or may not have voted Socialist, we say the PSOE will be an effective opposition, and one that defends the social majority who are sick of PP corruption and who are suffering job insecurity and inequality as a result of the PP’s cuts,” he said.
The latest polls place the Socialists slightly ahead of Podemos after loosing ground to the far-left group late last year, though the conservatives remain firmly in front despite unpopular economic policies and a slew of corruption scandals. A further recent slew of corruption scandals involving former senior PP figures in Madrid’s regional government has served to vindicate Sánchez’s stance.
“When the Socialists lost their profile as the alternative and became confused with their adversary, the electorate ends up not recognising it and going for more populist options,” Sánchez campaign coordinator José Luís Ábalos said. But the bickering and disarray in the PSOE’s ranks has also allowed the anti-austerity Podemos party to seize the political initiative – and increase the pressure on its socialist rivals – by calling for a vote of no confidence in what it describes as Rajoy’s “parasitic” and corrupt government.
On Friday, Podemos filed a motion of no-confidence against Rajoy, a move seen as a challenge to the Socialists to vote to fight the conservatives by their side in a leftist coalition they have until now resisted. Díaz, who was backed by party heavyweights including the former PSOE prime ministers Felipe Gónzalez and José Luis Zapatero, had called for a more pragmatic approach to dealing with the PP and blamed Sánchez’s attempts to forge alliances with Podemos and the centrist Ciudadanos party for the PSOE’s worst general elections results since Spain’s return to democracy.
Antonio Barroso, an analyst at the political risk advisory firm Teneo Intelligence, said Sánchez would struggle to unite a PSOE still reeling from months of infighting.
“You’ve had a very bitter fight – including the ouster of Sánchez – and he’s also burned a lot of bridges internally,” said Barroso.
He added that although opinion polls suggested Sánchez would be the PSOE’s best bet as leader in a general election, the party’s internal troubles remained a huge liability.
“That’s the paradox for Sánchez: even though opinion polls make him the most competitive candidate for the Socialist party, the internal divisions of the Socialist party handicap him electorally,” said Barroso.
“Voters don’t like divided parties and if he’s not able to unite the party, he won’t be able to effectively use the supposed popularity that opinion polls have given to him.”
Rajoy, said Barroso, would remain in a strong position as long as the Socialists continued to slog it out with each other. While calling snap elections to take advantage of the situation would appear obvious and opportunistic, the prime minister could later use Sánchez’s apparent intransigence as an excuse to send Spain back to the polls.
“He could say: ‘These people are blocking things and trying to create instability.’ That would be a very strong argument to use if he goes for early elections.”