Mario Alegria (Columnist)
KING Felipe has begun the third and final round of talks with the nation’s political leaders to try to find a consensus among them in a last minute effort to form a government.
Judging by the behaviour of many of the party leaders over the past four months, it doesn’t appear there will be any government and new elections will have to be called on May 2.
The problem is that recent polls have shown little has changed in the minds of voters and the results of the new elections – possible scheduled for June 26 – will remain the same.
In other words we can be back to square one.
Most official surveys have shown that most Spaniards however are not too concerned about not having a formed government.
They appear more worried about unemployment and corruption.
Besides, the 2016 budget won’t run out until the end of the year, so there is money in the coffers for now.
But Spain’s growth forecast for this year has been curtailed, fueled mainly by the political crisis and the current interim government’s inability to make major decisions under the law.
Some ministers have even refused to appear before Congress for hearings on different issues because parliament is led by a Socialist and many seats in the leftist block belong to Podemos and other extremist parties.
Spaniards cannot ignore what is happening in the political arena – the situation is much more serious than what it appears to be.
At the same time, the new trend of not forming a government soon after an election is a dangerous precedent.
But in this case party leaders are at fault because they do not want to cooperate with each other.
Few are willing to form pacts while at the same time excluding other groupings from their agreements.
No last-minute pacts are expected to be formed this week before the king will have to officially dissolve parliament and call elections.
So it appears we will be faced with a similar dire situation in July.
