National
Zapatero under fire over the economic slowdown
By h.b. - Jul 3, 2008 - 7:44 AM
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Spain’s Prime Minister found himself on his own during the control session in Congress yesterday. In the Spanish equivalent of Prime Minister’s Questions, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, came under attack from all the opposition parties for his refusal to admit that the country is in the middle of an economic crisis.
Left wingers IU, Catalan Republicans ERC and the Catalan Coalition CiU, all accused the Prime Minister of denying the situation, while the Mixed Group of smaller parties criticised what they saw as the slowness of the Government to respond to the slowdown.
Rosa Díez from the UpyD said that Zapatero made ‘a perverse use of language to make the truth appear like lies’.
The leader of the Partido Popular, Mariano Rajoy, offered his support to the Prime Minister, provided he admitted the seriousness of the situation, but Zapatero continued with his explanations of an international slowdown and high oil prices being to blame, and refused to use the ‘crisis’ word.
Only the Prime Minister’s own Socialist group considered the measures taken to fight the economic situation as being ‘serious and well thought out’.
The entire debate lasted for more than 8 hours and while Zapatero avoided talk of crisis, he did admit that worse was to come, although he denied that a recession was on the way.
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