Mario Alegria (Columnist)
TIME is running out and none of the major political parties have any type of direction as to where they are going.
April 29 seems to be the deadline day for the parties to try to pull together a coalition government that can run Spain for the next four years.
But after more than 90 days since the December 20 elections left a fractured parliament and an ungovernable state, the four major political forces have refused to budge on their positions.
The Socialists will once again try to convince leftist Podemos to join its pact with the centre right Ciudadanos party.
But Podemos wants too much power in any future government, which the Socialists are not willing to yield.
At the same time, Podemos don’t want Ciudadanos to be included in the pact.
So then what? The ruling Popular Party, the government which is in a transitional stage, is still opting for the great pact between Ciudadanos and PSOE.
The problem is that neither party wants Mariano Rajoy to continue as prime minister in which he insists.
There have even been calls within the PP that he must step aside. We are all back to square one.
The political parties don’t seem to be too concerned that the gruelling process will have to continue, even after the next elections, if there is no real winner.
The 2016 budgets have been passed so we seemed covered for the rest of the year.
Not really a fine way of looking at things.
But politicians want to play politics, it is part of their blood.
They must broker that tiny compromise before they can satisfactorily say they hammered out deal.
Spain is not really governed properly at all, so no one has noticed the lack of a government lol.
You took the words out of my mouth Fred! I think Spain is much better without any government. No new nasties or draconian new laws on the horizon, bliss.
Without positive action on the part of voters, things can, and likely will, get worse before hitting bottom. Kind of like Alcoholics Anonymous – people getting drunk on cynicism and the pseudo comfort of helplessness instead of coming together for constructive political action.
Recently the US government reported they refuse to negotiate on the cost for cleaning the soil of Palomares from the nuclear waste being caused by the crash of a US aircraft in 1966 until there will be installed a new Spanish government. Spain reported they had failed to limit their self predicted new debt rise at 4% of GDP but ended up with over 5% (the EU tolerates 3%).
Therefor the EU should refuse to donate new subsidies to Spain until a new central government has been installed.
Spanish fiscal incompetence is a separate issue from US’s responsibility to pay for and participate in clean-up. But any ear-marked US funds must be isolated from general budget funds and audited to prevent misuse.