SPAIN-POLITICS: Aznar Looks for Coalition Partners

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

Madrid, Mar 4 1996 (IPS) - The leader of Spain’s conservative Popular Party Jose Maria Aznar will have to negotiate a coalition government after failing to win an overall majority in parliament in Sunday’s general election, political analysts said.

The Popular Party (PP) won 156 seats – 20 short of an absolute majority – and party secretary, Mariano Rajoy, indicated a pact with the Catalans, who hold 16 seats, was one immediate possibility.

The new opposition will be headed by the Spanish Workers Socialist Party (PSOE) led by outgoing Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, which still holds strong representation in parliament.

Gonzalez, shaken by corruption scandals and the ‘dirty war’ against the Basque separatists, has had to govern for the past two years with the support of Convergence and Union (CiU), a moderate nationalist alliance which rules in Catalonia, the autonomist region in northeast Spain.

This support first conditioned, then ended up by destabilising the socialist government, which was forced into tough negotiations with the CiU every time the government wanted to pass a piece of legislation through parliament.

Finally the CiU forced Gonzalez to call early elections by denying Gonzalez its votes, which were essential to get the government’s 1996 budget estimates approved by parliament.

Aznar asked the electors to vote for “a comfortable majority” for his PP, hso as to have enough deputies to enable him to form a government without having to fall back on support from the Catalan nationalists. But with the Popular Party securing only 156 deputies in a 350-seat parliament, Azanar must negotiate support from other parties.

As soon as the final results were known the PP leader said that his relative majority “may be sufficient to govern Spain”. A new political cycle will open which will recover public confidence in constitutional values and bring “harmony, tolerance and generosity,” he added.

He also said he would offer his outstretched hand “to everybody”, since “a large centre party is disposed to take over the government of Spain in order to govern with everybody and by everybody for the common good”.

Besides an alliance with the Catalans Aznar may negotiate bringing in the moderate Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which elected five deputies, to form a tri-partite coalition government to last for parliament’s full term of four years, political analysts said.