The Spanish Socialist party (PSOE) is willing to call Spanish elections and negotiate an agreement with the Citizens (Cs) party if the Socialists' motion of no-confidence in Mariano Rajoy's government is passed by Spain's Congress. "Calling elections is a reasonable process which will not be an obstacle to reaching an agreement with Cs", says the PSOE's organizational secretary, José Luis Ábalos.
The PSOE official made this statement in an interview with the Cope radio station on Saturday, emphasising that there "will not be a problem" in calling an election in order "to reach an agreement" with Cs. The comments follow Friday's announcement by PSOE leader Pedro Sánchez that his party will lead a vote of no-confidence in the Popular Party-led Spanish government, heavily damaged this week by the result of the so-called Gürtel corruption trial.
Ábalos said that if "Cs want elections to be called there will be no problem, and if they want no pact to be made with the Catalan independence parties, there won't be one". He also challenged Citizens' leader Albert Rivera to "stop looking for excuses". He stated that the no-confidence motion "is not a manoeuvre to reach power", but rather to respond to a Spanish government that "doesn't want to accept any sort of responsibility" after the "devastating" verdict in the Gürtel case. With regard to this corruption case, the PSOE politician commented that Spain's National Audience court has given a verdict in which it "gives confirmation" of some "already well-known" facts, which "are now put in full relief".
In the view of Ábalos, the court sentence makes it clear that there has been a "systematic plot to run a parallel funding system" for the party, with people who were responsible to the treasury of the PP having received "very significant sentences".
With respect to the need for support from the Catalan independence MPs in order to win the no-confidence motion, Ábalos has said that his party is not looking for the pro-independence parties' support. "It is time for every political group to make its own response, and we appeal to the responsibility of other political parties. We are proposing the no-confidence motion because it is necessary", he concluded.
The political balance in Spain's Congress means there are, theoretically, different possible combinations of parties that could have sufficient votes to defeat Rajoy's minority government on the confidence question; however, there are also difficulties. If Cs fail to support the motion, then the votes of the pro-independence Catalan parties will be necessary to carry it through - which would be seen as a contradiction for the PSOE given its recent strong rhetoric against Catalonia. On the other hand, Cs currently hold a lead in popularity wih Spanish voters according to recent polls, and if they were to support the vote, they could be handing the initiative to the PSOE, their nearest rival as possible leaders of an alternative government.