Spain needs more support to form new government : Commentator

Press TV has interviewed Ramin Vahidzadeh, a political commentator in Tehran, about Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE) snubbing an offer by the anti-austerity Podemos Party to hold exclusive talks – only involving the two factions – to form a new government.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Why were the Socialists conducting parallel talks with other parties to form a new government?

Vahidzadeh: Well, the reason is that to form a new government they need support and the support of Podemos will not be enough in this matter because based on the parliament seats, they need more help. So if they do not want to include the other party which is Ciudadanos, they have to forge this coalition with other leftist parties which one of them is actually the separatist party of Esquerra Republicana from Catalonia.

So if they want to go in that way, they have to put aside all of their slogans against the independentism and say that Okay right now we are going to support the independentism because we want to have the votes on governing Spain.

The thing here is that Podemos is saying the right thing in some matter because Ciudadanos is another version of Popular Party of Mariano Rajoy but with some moderate views. If they are really serious on what they have told the people of Spain that we are a progressive movement from the left view, they cannot do this coalition with Ciudadanos. Nevertheless, they could give them somehow a minor advantage in order to have this coalition.

The thing is Pablo Iglesias wants to be the vice prime minister and Ciudadanos does not agree with that. If they can somehow manage to put aside these problems, they can have the coalition government because the coalition government will be the best issue here for all those traditional parties because celebrating another round of elections right now based on the views and based on the polls shows that Podemos will have a great majority.

Press TV: But what will happen next if the coalition talks which the Socialists are conducting fail?

Vahidzadeh: Well based on the constitution, they will bid another two months for the other two parties which will be Podemos and Ciudadanos to reach for a coalition and based on the votes Podemos has the right to do that because they are the third in the podium and they will announce another time that they want this coalition with the Socialists and somehow without the Ciudadanos and they are having the upper hand here to talk about this.

If they fail, likely in this time there will be forged coalition that Mariano Rajoy wanted all this time which was a coalition between Socialists, Popular Party and Ciudadanos in order to put aside Podemos but it is very difficult for Socialists to do that because all these years after the dictatorship of Franco, we are seeing that these two parties had the fight saying that each one of them are going for treason to the people and so in this matter a new coalition between the Socialists and the Popular Party will somehow disappoint the voters and there will be a disaster for the next round.

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