Sánchez ready to run in next elections after resignation scare

6 months ago 28

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is determined to fight to regain his post and defend his leadership, after several nerve-wracking days where he said he was seriously considering resigning.

Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) surprised the whole of Spain and his party colleagues on 24 April when, in a “letter to the citizens” published on X, he announced that he would be taking five days off to reflect on his continued leadership of the PSOE-Sumar coalition government.

Despite talk in Madrid of a possible resignation or snap elections, the prime minister announced on Monday that he would remain in office to contribute to the “regeneration” of Spanish politics.

In an interview aired on private radio station Cadena SER on Wednesday, Sánchez said he would be willing to run again for head of government in the event of new elections because, he said, he felt “in good spirits for these three years (remaining until the end of the current term) and for those that Spaniards want with their vote”.

In the radio interview, however, he did not reveal or specify any concrete measures for the “democratic regeneration” he mentioned in his speech on Monday.

This challenging endeavour to dignify Spanish politics cannot be the sole responsibility of the government, but must also involve parliament and the media, he insisted.

“I have decided to lead it (the regeneration movement), not to monopolise it,” the prime minister insisted.

The battle to “clean up” Spanish politics cannot be won “in three days, three months or three years”, he stressed.

Refuting criticism from PP and VOX

Sánchez said he was enthusiastic about running again in new elections.

“If the Spanish people and my party want me to continue to be in charge of the government and the leader of the PSOE, as long as I have the will, conviction and ideas to transform my country, I will do it”, Sánchez added.

Both the PP and the far-right VOX party, the third largest force in parliament, slammed Sánchez’s decision to take a break, describing it as a purely personal political strategy designed to keep him in power.

“This is not comical, it is tragic: great damage has been done to our country”, the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, lamented.

VOX leader Santiago Abascal described Sánchez’s period of reflection as a “flight forward” which, in his opinion, “reaffirms his coup against coexistence, the rule of law, the separation of powers and freedom of the press (…) the worst is yet to come”, warned the head of the far-right formation.

Furthermore, Abascal assured on X that Sánchez is a “victimising autocrat”.

In this sense, Sánchez pointed out in the radio interview that if, in his speech on Monday, he had presented a series of measures to combat what he called the “mud machine” of the right-wing camp, both the PP and VOX, but also his party colleagues and the left-wing camp as a whole, would have accused him of taking time off not for reflection, but for purely political “tactics”.

In a separate interview with RTVE on Monday evening, the prime minister said that his period of reflection was entirely sincere, that it was not a tactic and that it was his wife, Begoña Gómez, who convinced him not to resign.

(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)