National
Spanish Socialists to start talks on support for Zapatero investiture as Prime Minister
By m.p.
Mar 24, 2008 - 9:05 PM

José Blanco, the governing PSOE party’s Secretary for Organisation, has announced that a round of contacts starts this Tuesday with a view to negotiating pacts with other parties for support in the investiture of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in his second mandate as Prime Minister.

Blanco said the first meetings will take place with the Catalan party, CiU, and the Basque Nationalists, PNV, ‘without any type of previous condition or limits.’ They won 10 and 6 seats to Congress respectively, with Zapatero needing seven votes in addition to his party’s own 169 seats to be invested with an absolute majority in a first vote. It’s understood that this first round of talks is aimed at establishing which parties would be prepared to support Zapatero’s investiture, and will also include the Partido Popular, whose candidate for presidency in the national poll held on 9th March, Mariano Rajoy, has previously said that his party will abstain in the vote.

José Blanco also gave news of the Socialist MPs who will hold positions of responsibility in parliament for this legislature. Earlier reports that the Acting Defence Minister, José Antonio Alonso, has been named as the party’s spokesman in Congress have been confirmed after a meeting of PSOE’s federal executive on Monday afternoon, and Carmen Silva as spokesperson for the Senate was also approved. José Bono, who was José Antonio Alonso’s predecessor as Defence Minister, has been confirmed as President of Congress, and Ramón Jáuregui as general secretary of the Socialist parliamentary grouping, the body which must still however, at a meeting on Wednesday, ratify all these decisions.