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Mariano Rajoy in parliament.
Five votes from the minor Basque Nationalist Party are expected to swing a tightly-balanced no-confidence motion against Spain’s center-right prime minister Mariano Rajoy, whose party has been caught up in a kickback scandal.
“Resign, Mr Rajoy. Your time is up,” Pedro Sanchez, the leader of the opposition socialists PSOE, which initiated the motion, told Spain’s parliament.
As Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP) holds only 134 out of 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies, the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament, the prime minister needs the support of others to survive in a simple majority.
Meanwhile, a bitter debate ranged in the chamber, in which an unapologetic Rajoy, who has led the country since 2011, accused his ousters of “playing Mother Teresa” with corruption accusations in order to worm their way into power.
Rajoy also defended his party over the corruption indictment that last week saw dozens of former PP officials and backers jailed for money laundering and fraud, for operating a kickbacks-for-contracts scheme between 1999 and 2006. PP itself was fined €240,000 for benefitting from the racket.
The 63-year-old prime minister said that the behavior of individuals was not reflective of the party as a whole, and pointed out numerous scandals in which opposition socialists have recently been embroiled.
The socialists' Pedro Sanchez could become Spain's next prime minister. / Reuters
Even if the current motion were to somehow fail, Ciudadanos say they will launch no-confidence proceedings of its own, with the aim of calling a fresh election for autumn, which could produce a more decisive result, and another swing away from the teetering centrist parties.
