• Valencian president says PSOE does not have votes for coalition government
• Puig says Podemos demands on Catalonia nixed chance for left-parties’ unity
The Socialist party President of the Valencian community, Ximo Puig, says he is “convinced” that Spain’s general elections will need to be repeated in March because of the apparent impossibility of either of the two main parties putting together enough votes in Congress to form a majority coalition government.
In an interview with the daily newspaper El País, Puig said that it is highly unlikely that PSOE party leader Pedro Sánchez can gather enough opposition votes to put together a coalition to unseat the governing conservative party of acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, the Partido Popular (PP).
Puig also said that the anti-austerity Podemos party, which finished third in the balloting behind the PP and PSOE, is responsible for the PSOE’s inability to unseat Rajoy’s party by having established a priori the condition that PSOE must support a referendum on Catalan independence, which Puig said Podemos knew the PSOE would not accept.
In Valencia, Puig said his PSOE-PSPV party governs in coalition with Compromís, a movement backed by Podemos, because they had agreed upon a common agenda and held sufficient votes to unseat the PP. That situation does not exist at the national level, he said, making it highly likely that no coalition government will be formed in January and new general elections will be scheduled for some time in March.
Read the Full Interview in Spanish at El País >>
