ZAPATERO WILL NOT STAND AGAIN

Whatever happens at the next Spanish general election in March 2012 the country will find itself led by a new prime minister. On Saturday José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero announced at a PSOE conference that he would not be a candidate at the polls.


The move was widely anticipated and so Zapatero draws a close on what will be his two terms as premier. The next prime minister could be Mariano Rajoy whose Partido Popular currently lead in the polls. Who will lead PSOE has yet to be decided.

Although the PP is riding high in the polls, largely because of the financial crisis, Rajoy will be a nervous man. He took over the leadership of the party from outgoing premier José María Aznar in 2004 and seemed favourite to win until the March 11 bombs in Madrid and the anger over the Iraq War railroaded his campaign. H was defeated at the polls just three days later.

Now PSOE will look for a new leader who will probably close the gap on the PP. The problem for Rajoy is he is not popular in the country and various polls have shown that even Zapatero was more liked on a personal basis. So could Rajoy and his party be robbed of the crown yet again?

The process to decide who faces him in 2012 will not start till after the town hall and some regional government elections on May 22. Zapatero said he was announcing his decision now to dispel any uncertainty but there would be no immediate campaigning for his job as everybody would be concentrating on the local and autonomous elections (not in Andalucía until 2012).

It is likely the committee to run the election for his successor will meet on May 28 and the process will be completed during the summer. However whoever emerges as the winner will be the leader in waiting as Zapatero is adamant he will lead the government till the end of its term.

So who will be the new leader? Two names are currently in the frame. The first, and probably favourite, is Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, the new strong man of the government and first deputy premier. He is also the minister of the interior and has been at the heart of the battle again ETA. His likely challenger is also battle hardened. She is Carme Chacón, the first female defence minister and one who is rated as having made a success of the job.

Rubalcaba is considered by many as the only candidate capable of taking on the PP and winning. According to the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas poll Rubalcaba is the mostly highly rated member of the government but is intriguingly followed by Chacón in second place. The other question is – are the socialists and wider Spain ready for a female party leader and hence potential prime minister?

I blogged about Rubalcaba when he first showed in the opinion polls that he would be more popular than Zapatero dubbing his emergence as PSOE’s Gordon Brown moment. Rather than bottle it as the Labour Party in the UK did (to David Miliband’s cost) the Spanish socialists have set the beleaguered Zapatero aside and will go in to the general election with a new leader at the helm. Their hope now will be to win outright or at least win sufficient seats to form a coalition.

FLIGHTS TO NOWHERE

If a “top secret” document leaked to the Spanish newspaper El País is genuine then it appears that the US sought permission from the Spanish Foreign Ministry in 2002 for rendition flights.

The Spanish government has always denied that “secret stopover” flights by CIA planes transporting terror suspects to the US military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, landed on the nation’s soil.

Now it appears that in early 2002 a request was communicated to Spain’s then foreign minister, Josep Pique, hours before a CIA flight landed at Moron airbase in Sevilla. It is further claimed that the government of José María Aznar recommended that “discreet” airports could be used for the stopover of rendition flights.

Aznar was a strong ally of the US in the war of terror. It was during his term of office that the secret flights allegedly started. The former prime minister is on the record as having denied any knowledge of the stopovers.

Spain’s current foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, stated on Sunday that the socialist government of which he is a key member, which came to power in March 2004, had not been informed that these authorisations having been given. He insisted: “We have nothing to hide,” and ordered an internal investigation stressing that Spain had a strong commitment to human rights.

The inference therefore seems to be that the CIA flights took place during Aznar’s watch and not Zapatero’s. However the president of the Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, insists that during the Aznar reign he was not involved in any discussions on the flights to Guantánamo. Furthermore he added that two of these flights took place in the Aznar era but nine under Zapatero.

Rajoy also stated that the minister of defence has stated that these flights were: “legal and based on treaties between the USA and Spain”. So did Aznar and Zapatero know about the flights or where they sent via US bases in Spain such as Moron or Rota without the Spanish government’s knowledge? Also, why has US President George Bush been cold-shouldering Zapatero when it would appear the socialist premier’s administration allowed these controversial flights – or did they?

Certainly the Council of Europe now appears vindicated. It published a report in June 2006 that named Spain as one of 14 European countries allegedly in collusion with the CIA to transport terrorist suspects on secret flights to third party countries for interrogation but these claims were hotly denied by Madrid.

A report approved by a European Parliament committee in 2007 said more than 1,000 covert CIA flights had crossed European airspace or stopped at European airports in the four years after the 9/11 attacks. It now remains to be seen how many of those were in or via Spain – and who knew about them.

ROSA TOPS THE POLITICAL LEAGUE

Her party may have very little electoral support but Rosa Díez is currently the most valued politician in Spain. The leader of the recently formed UPyD records 5.1 in a poll by Público compared with 4.7 for Prime Minister José María Zapatero and 4.3 for the Partido Popular’s Mariano Rajoy.

Rosa Díez was the former leader of PSOE in the Basque region. Her party received just 1.9 per cent of the vote at the last election but is now recording 4 per cent.

However it is far from bad news for Zapatero and the socialists. It seems that despite the economic crisis PSOE is back in the lead. If an election was held now it would romp home with 41.3 per cent compared with 39 per cent support for the PP.

Of course different soundings give difference levels of support. La Rázon for instance gives the PP a winning percentage of the votes and more seats than the socialists.

Two things are clear though – a politician of a party with little chance of winning power is more popular than any mainstream opponent and even with the country and the world in economic turmoil Mariano Rajoy and the PP have still to convince people that their present and future would be safer in their hands. One wonders what calamity has to befall the country before Spain swings behind Rajoy.

Rosa Díez is surely a happy woman today – but the real smile must be on the face of Zapatero.