Last Sunday José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was reelected as Spain’s prime minister. Zapatero, leader of Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), defeated right-wing rival Mariano Rajoy by a convincing, though not overwhelming, 3% margin. The campaigns had been marked by debates over immigration, ETA terrorism, and economic hardships. In fact, many nursed doubts about Zapatero’s claim to reelection given that Spain’s economic performance has been less successful than it was during his antecessor right-wing, war-supporter José María Aznar.
Doubts about Zapatero’s reelection were also fueled by the abnormal circumstances that prompted his victory over the Right, 4 years ago. Recall that all the polls gave the lead to Rajoy over Zapatero the days previous to the 2004 election until the terrorist attacks took place in Madrid, 3 days before the election. It was an open question whether Zapatero would be able to defeat Rajoy without the Madrid attacks fresh in Spain’s memory. As it turns out, Zapatero has come out empowered of the election.
The election of Zapatero confirms a clear tendency toward the left in the Latin world over the last decade or so.
Along with
Spain,
Argentina,
Brazil,
Chile,
Ecuador,
Nicaragua and
Uruguay have social democratic governments.
In addition,
Venezuela and
Bolivia have governments identified with less moderate leftist ideals.
7 Comments:
Actually, there was never any doubt that Zapatero would win the elections, at least during the past few weeks. All the polls gave PSOE at lest 2 points of advantage. The main questions was by how much they would win. And I must say that I hoped for more. Both parties have better results than last time. Before the elections PSOE had 16 seat more than PP in the parliament, now they have only 15 seats over PP. PP in fact has gone up too much for the message to be clear that people do not like their right-wing, conservative and bitter discourse.
As for the reasons for which Zapatero may not have won, the economy certainly may have been a reason, but it would not be so much for the general economic performance of Zapatero, but for the economic crisis looming over Spain. Zapatero actually has taken the government from a deficit to a superavit, unemployment has fallen and even if inflation has gone up, it has not gone up very much compared to the other European countries. Overall, Spain's economy is comparatively speaking (i.e. given the general crisis) quite strong and better than it was 4 years ago.
The criticism of PP, and hence the political debate, has been centered mainly in a few things: ETA, social policies (religious education, gay marriage, for instance), territorial politics (the catalan's new charter) and immigration. Only in the past few weeks they started talking about economy, as the campaign started. PP has tried to destabilize the government continuously for the past 4 years. They have had a combative tone, even in the moments when all the rest of the parties were supporting the government. Their discourse has been extra conservative, showing their close ties to the most old-fashioned and bitter part of the Church. I wish they would have lost much worse than they did. The fact that so many people have voted them I think show how much some Spaniards still like the old-fashioned conservative style that PP represents, and I find it quite depressing that that is so, particularly given that the ties between PP and old Francoism (Franco was the dictator, died 1975) are clear and obvious, which makes me think that there are lots of people who have not quite got over that period in Spain's time, and that, in general, the bitter divisions that provoked a civil war in 1936 are still latent in the people.
Correction: PSOE still has 16 seat more than PP... it changed! Still, my point stands.
Another interesting fact about last Sunday's election is the bad performances of the "small parties". Among these, only the CIU increased its seats in congress. On the one hand, this strengthens the two-party system in Spain (both PSOE and PP increased their representation). On the other, this confirms your point that many Spaniards still like that Franco-like Right. In fact, unfortunately it seems as though Francoism is growing in Spain as those extra seats the PP won partially came from local nationalist parties such as ERC and from the IU (the United Left Party).
For a dissenting voice, this is an article by Spanish right-wing journalist Jesús Cacho, where he argues that the PP lost, and will continue to lose, precisely because of lack of renovation:
http://www.elconfidencial.com/cache/2008/03/10/20_sigue_igual.html
I have to disagree again... the votes that the nationalist parties and the left part IU lost, were lost to the PSOE. The votes that PP won, were won from centrist voters and more radical right voters who decided to support PP against PSOE. I think this is the reason that PP and PSOE got stronger and the small parties almost disappeared from parliament: the confrontation between PP and PSOE was so great that voters from both extremes and nationalists, who normally vote the smaller parties, decided to vote for either PP or PSOE, for fear that the other would win. Thus, basque and catalan nationalists voted for PSOE, and left wingers also. Whereas Spanish nationalists, more radical right and center-right voters, voted for PP. The debate between the two big parties has been quite lively and confrontational, which provoked everyone to take sides, and hence the growing bi-partidism.
By the way, this is an interesting article that discusses the same issues.
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/centro/elecciones/9-M/elpepuopi/20080311elpepiopi_12/Tes
Well, the fact is that while the PSOE got 5 more seats, all the small parties combined lost 8. Hence, there's a 3-seat difference that needs to be explained. Now I don't know if the voters suddenly switched to the PP or if new voters participated that transported the whole political spectrum to the right (as your article suggests). Either way, there were 3 seats that passed from the Left to the Right.
Yes, there are some votes that is hard to explain where they went. But remember that the seat in parliament do not represent proportionally the number of voters that each party had, it depends on each constituency (according to their population) and also it depends on an electoral law called law d'Hondt, some French guy, which distributes the seats in parliament in such a way that the big parties get more seats. This means that for a small party to get a seat is more difficult (i.e. they need more votes) than it is for a big party.
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