Spain political parties need to forge coalition: Commentator

Press TV has interviewed Ramin Vahidzadeh, a political commentator in Tehran, to discuss the results of Spain’s general elections.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: How do you feel about these results?

Vahidzadeh: Well the results are not that unexpected. As we saw before the campaigning, we saw a division between all the political parties and due to the economic crisis that Spain faces, the emerging parties come out like Podemos and Ciudadanos and they gained great votes of the citizens.

So what we are seeing here is the result of not having an economic plan from the central government and from some dispute that is taking place between the Socialists and the main party of Mr. Rajoy’s. So this division came out and right now it is time for coalition but the coalition here is very difficult to forge because all the parties which right now form the opposition, which means the Socialists, Podemos and Ciudadanos, are against Mr. Rajoy and Mr. Rajoy himself cannot form a new government because he does not have the absolute majority.

The first scenario could be an abstention of Ciudadanos so he can have some majority points in the parliament and form the new government. But there is a threat like what happened in Portugal that Podemos and Socialists and Izquierda Unida, another leftist party and also Izquierda Republicana, another party from Catalonia which is pro-independence can form a new government.

But this new government per se will have another problem which will be the differences between the issues that they are taking in their campaign because Socialists want to keep this form of politics that they have with some reforms, Podemos is a radical party, it wants changes and also the Catalans are going with their issue of independence. So it will be a tough negotiation in the next days but firstly that we can see would be that King Felipe will give the permission to Mr. Rajoy to try that somehow if he can negotiate to find a new government but if not, in another two days we will see that what will be on the leftists’ view.  

Press TV: And I am looking at the long-term consequences here. Podemos leaders are already saying that Spain will never be the same again. How do you feel about such a statement?  

Vahidzadeh: Well it is very certain that Spain will not be like what it is until the next four years because after the dictatorship of Franco, we hadn’t have this division in the political system. The power was between the socialists and the popular party and right now the coalition that we face until now was that some minority parties were in the game and formed this coalition with the mainstream political parties. But right now we have four new forces here. All four forces have the power to negotiate and be the next kingmaker.

So it is certainly a New Spain and we should wait what will happen in the political scene by the coalition that will be forged or will not be forged and we will see another anticipated election.

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