The Spanish centre sees the PP as more capable of resolving the state's economic woes, writes PADDY WOODWORTH
HOW DO you vote in the middle of an avalanche? A sense of chronic insecurity, even panic, has afflicted Spain in this final week of a general election campaign. Each day has seen the threat of EU intervention and loss of sovereignty loom larger.
That anxiety is reflected in yesterday’s plea to the markets for a “minimum margin to manoeuvre” from the man universally tipped to be elected the next prime minister tomorrow, Mariano Rajoy.
“We hope this stops,” he told a radio station. “We hope the markets realise that there is an election going on here and that the winners have a right to that margin.”
Reflecting the general sense that things are moving at an almost incomprehensible speed, he pleaded that the winners “should be given rather more than half an hour”.
Almost as he spoke, the markets rated Spain’s bonds as a worse risk than Italy’s for the first time since August.
Privately, Rajoy, who has led the deeply conservative Partido Popular (PP) in opposition for eight years, may be reflecting on the old maxim that one should beware of what one wishes for.
The economic incompetence of the outgoing Socialist Party (PSOE) prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has offered Rajoy victory on a plate, but governing Spain for the next four years is beginning to look like a very poisoned dish.
All major opinion polls agree that Rajoy is likely to win an overall majority. The PSOE candidate, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, was reduced yesterday to begging disenchanted Socialist Party voters to participate, not so that he could win the election but so that the PP would not win by too much.
“I fear that the PP will turn an absolute majority into absolute power,” he warned, reminding voters that the conservatives already control most of the country’s regional and municipal authorities.
His subtext however was the time-honoured election message of the Spanish left: the PP includes many apologists for the Franco dictatorship and its democratic credentials have a flawed pedigree.
There is truth in that charge, but it will garner few votes for the PSOE this time around. The big parties differ on many important issues – gay marriage, the role of the Catholic church, education and the legacy of the Basque conflict. All these questions however have shrunk to insignificance in the face of the economic cyclone sweeping the country.
The Spanish centre, not the left or right, is the key to all elections here post-Franco and centrist voters clearly believe that the PP will manage the crisis better than the PSOE.
The irony is that the macro- management of the crisis is probably the only issue on which the two parties broadly agree. In early September, some say under secret pressure from Brussels, the PSOE and PP reached an unprecedented deal to write into the constitution fixed limits on the ratio of debt to GDP.
This bold but controversial move staved off immediate EU intervention and the Spanish bond markets stabilised.
So while Greece, and then Italy, had to find new prime ministers by unconventional methods in search of some shelter from the economic storm, Spain got on with an early election campaign. It seemed as if the country had returned to something like business as usual, until the fresh assault from the bond markets this week.
The major election arguments have been about where, and by how much, to cut wages, pensions and services, but the reality is that each party has been doggedly coy about exactly how much pain it will inflict.
The uninspiring debates have echoed, but are oddly remote from, the urgent concerns that are driving many Spaniards to support the 15-M street protests. This is the movement that so dramatically erupted on to the streets during last May’s local elections. Yet the 15-M groups seem incapable – so far – of building a coherent alternative out of that impetus.
Assuming that Rajoy will be elected, and also that he still has some real say in how he runs the country, the PP leader remains an enigma. He is still somewhat overshadowed by his colourful predecessor, José María Aznar, who has continued to make headlines with strident right-wing comments ever since he resigned in 2004.
Rajoy is thought to be more moderate and more pragmatic that Aznar, but there is also evidence to the contrary.
He accused Zapatero of “betraying the dead” when the prime minister offered talks to the Basque terrorist group Eta in 2005, although the PP had done the same thing a few years earlier.
Apart from the economy, the biggest challenge Rajoy will face is the situation in the Basque country. Eta appears to have finally exited the scene there – an unsung triumph for Zapatero – but support for independence is on the rise and hundreds of Eta prisoners remain in jail.
Here, as elsewhere, Rajoy will need to exhibit a statesmanship he has lacked to date.