ELECTIONS-SPAIN: Socialists Celebrate Victory

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

José Antonio Gurriarán

MADRID, Mar 10 2008 (IPS) - The Spanish Socialist Workers Party’s (PSOE) victory in Sunday’s elections confirmed Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in office and increased the party’s share of seats in parliament from 164 to 169.

With 99.8 percent of the ballots counted, the PSOE took 43.7 percent of the vote, and the right-wing Popular Party (PP) garnered 40.1 percent.

The governing party thus gained five seats in the 350-member legislature, while the PP will have 153 members, up from 148 in the last session of parliament. Turnout stood at just over 75 percent.

However, the PSOE fell short of winning an absolute majority of 176 members, which would have made it possible to govern without the need for support from smaller parties.

“I want to open a new stage that turns its back on confrontation and seeks agreements on affairs of the state. I will govern for everyone, but thinking first of all of those who do not have everything,” said Zapatero in his victory speech.

Conceding defeat for his party, PP Senator Pío García Escudero said “I congratulate the PSOE. The victory is clear and was won in fair combat. We have had great results, a very significant increase in seats and in percentage of votes. We are satisfied.”

The United Left coalition of greens and communists suffered a harsh blow, taking less than four percent of the vote, and losing three of the five seats it held. Its leader, Gaspar Llamazares, acknowledged defeat and announced that he was resigning as head of the alliance.

The average difference between the PSOE and the PP forecast by the opinion polls, of around four percent, was confirmed by the outcome.

Despite the ban on publishing poll results within five days of the elections, the El Periódico newspaper of Barcelona continue posting them throughout the week, until the day before the elections, on a web site based in Andorra, the tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between Spain and France.

The latest survey indicated that after last Friday’s murder of former socialist town councillor Isaías Carrasco, which was blamed by the government on the Basque separatist group ETA, the PSOE continued to enjoy its lead in the polls.

Analysts said that reflected support by a majority of voters for Zapatero’s anti-terrorism policy, which has been carried out in the last four years with the backing of all of the parties in the legislature with the exception of the PP, as well as rejection of the way the centre-right opposition party used the issue in the campaign.

A majority of the 400,000 young voters over 18 who exercised their right to vote for the first time on Sunday supported Zapatero, who became popular among young people when he pulled Spain’s troops out of the U.S.-led war on Iraq right after he first took office in 2004.