• Neither Rajoy nor Iglesias would have Socialists’ support to lead government
• ‘Pablo Iglesias is not going to be President’, Sánchez tells radio interviewer
The leader of Spain’s Socialist party (PSOE), Pedro Sánchez has reiterated that in the increasingly likely event that his party does not receive enough votes to enable him to lead a coalition government, he will not throw the PSOE’s support behind either acting President Mariano Rajoy of the conservative Partido Popular (PP) or Pablo Iglesias of the rival left-wing Unidos Podemos coalition.
Unable to support Rajoy because he said that would amount to a betrayal of Socialist voters, Sánchez also said that to support Iglesias’ bid to be the next president of Spain would be to back a government that would fragment Spain’s national sovereignty and threaten economic stability. “Pablo Iglesias is not going to be President of the government,” he said point blank on Monday in a radio interview on Onda Cero’s Más de Uno program.
Opinion polls released just prior to Monday’s deadline for publication of poll results prior to next Sunday’s general election all pointed to the likelihood that the PSOE might finish third behind Unidos Podemos, yet retain enough seats to enable the Socialists to determine who will be the next President of Spain. Given that scenario, Sánchez’s unwillingness to support either Rajoy or Iglesias would seem to portend tense days or even weeks of negotiations to form a new government in the wake of the upcoming election.
► Read More in Spanish at El País and El Periódico …
► Read More in English at Reuters …
