Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the head of centre-right opposition, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, kicked off a harsh pre-campaign on Saturday ahead of the upcoming municipal and general elections with accusations of bad governance.
In a socialist rally in Sevilla (south), a traditional stronghold of his party PSOE (S&D), Sánchez defended the vote for his political force as the only alternative “committed” to dignifying working conditions, salaries and pensions, as opposed to the “powerful” who only defend their interests and offer “every man for himself” to the social majority, he said, EURACTIV’s partner EFE reported.
Sánchez defended the progress made in Spain during the past three years of the legislature by the “The Government of the People” (El Gobierno de la Gente), a coalition forged by his centre-left PSOE and left-wing Unidas-Podemos (United We Can/Gue-NGL).
Thanks to the work achieved by the progressive coalition, Spain “today looks good in Europe in favour of the middle class and the workers of our country,” he stated.
Among the achievements, he cited an economic growth of more than 5% of the Spanish GDP in 2022, the fact that the country has the lowest inflation rate in the Eurozone, and enjoys a record employment rate, the best data in “more than five years, before the financial crisis,” he insisted.
He also mentioned the savings for Spanish taxpayers as a result of the Iberian derogation, a flexible and temporary solution to mitigate the impact of gas prices on electricity bills for Spanish and Portuguese consumers.
All these social measures, Sánchez stressed, were implemented despite the very difficult circumstances the Iberian country had to stand since April 2020, “with a (COVID-19) pandemic, a war (Ukraine), a Philomena (snow storm) and a volcano (La Palma)”.
Therefore, the prime minister and head of the PSOE asked citizens to think about what country and city they wanted before casting their vote in May, regardless of what they voted for in previous elections.
Meanwhile, Núñez Feijóo, in a political rally held on Saturday in Zaragoza called for a change of government and warned that “any vote for the candidates (in the municipal and regional elections) of the ‘sanchismo’ (Sánchez ideology and policies) will “underpin” him (Sánchez), EFE reported.
“I will stop being a candidate very soon to become president of the Spanish people”, a self-confident Feijóo said to his supporters.
He called on his supporters to win, not draw, while stressing that the PP does not want to lead “any bloc of parties” but to govern the majority. “We are running (in the election) to win, not to speculate on the result”, he stressed.
According to the PP leader, there will be a political change in the elections, “for honesty, dignity and morality”. Sánchez has done the opposite of what he promised in his campaign, which means having “deceived” Spaniards with regard to sedition and embezzlement, Núñez Feijóo reiterated.
He also defended the good management of public money that comes from taxes and said that embezzlement is “always corruption” and “the worst”, so minimising it is a way of “corrupting the institutions”.
In May, Spain will hold municipal elections, which many see as the first litmus test for Sanchez’s governing coalition with Unidas-Podemos.
After that, the parties will have to face the general election set for December, and the political row with Catalonia is one of the ‘hot potatoes’ in the Iberian political arena.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.EURACTIV.es)
Source: euractiv.com
