Fernando González Urbaneja| If we have to choose the highlights of Pedro Sánchez’s leadership trajectory, one of them would have to be the “No is No” (what part of this has not been understood?) It was his entry through the big door of political decisions by not enabling a new government after the first elections of 2016 with a tactical abstention, which mathematically blocked the forming of a parliamentary majority…
Jakob Suwalski (Scope Ratings) | Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s decision to call early elections is potentially advantageous for Spain’s economic outlook insofar as it should prevent the government from losing six months of valuable time to determine long-term policy goals, even if it means forming a coalition or minority government. This timeframe allows for reforms to be implemented and the country’s fiscal and economic challenges to be addressed. However, the…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Quite a few (including two national newspapers) have applied the arithmetic template of Sunday’s results to a general election with a result that would be favourable to the grand coalition of the left/nationalists, headed and sponsored by Pedro Sánchez. In this case the PP would be the most voted party with 140 deputies (with VOX in retreat below 20 seats) while the PSOE would remain as…
Fernando Gonzéz Urbaneja | The expectation of a very tough six-month election campaign weighed on Sánchez’s conscience throughout the evening after the evidence of Sunday’s results. This explains why bringing forward the elections is tactical and opportunistic (in political logic), and also why Feijóo began his speech in front of the cameras with the words: “the sooner the better”. Better for the incumbent who defends the results of November 2019,…
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has announced that the general election will be brought forward to next July 23 after the electoral defeat suffered this Sunday by the PSOE in the regional and municipal polls. The head of the Executive has assumed this Sunday’s electoral results “in first person” and his response is that this means “submitting the popular mandate to the popular will”, as he has stated…
Former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the second round of the presidential elections in Brazil on Sunday with 50.84% of the votes, compared to 49.16% for the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, with 99.10% of the ballot boxes counted. The leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), who governed between 2003 and 2010, will once again occupy the presidency of an extremely divided Brazil from 1 January 2023 and for…
Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | On October 2, general elections were held in Brazil in order to elect all seats in the lower house of Congress, one-third of seats in the Senate, all 27 state governors and the president. The race for president will be decided in a run-off on October 30, featuring incumbent far-right Jair Bolsonaro and left-wing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In a polarised first…
Fernando Gonzalez Urbaneja | I don’t want to assign the role of Richard III in the Spanish political drama, but the main contenders, Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Nuñez Feijóo, although with different intensity, are doomed to opt for whatever it takes to succeed and fail, like Richard III. The recent debate (combat) in the Senate between the two politicians with pretensions to rent La Moncloa showed desperation, obsession, determination to…
The candidates of Macron’s centrist grouping and the left-wing candidates of Mélenchon’s “New Popular Ecological and Social Union” (NUPES) obtained around 25% of the vote each in the first round of the French legislative elections, which ended with a record abstention rate in France’s recent history. More than half of the electorate (around 53%) stayed away from the polls. All will be decided in the second round next Sunday. The…
After a crisis-plagued mandate, centrist Emmanuel Macron on Sunday became the first president to win re-election in France since 2002. With 58.54% of the vote, the candidate of La République en Marche, once again defeated Marine Le Pen, standard-bearer of Rassemblement Nationale, who would have won 41.46% of the vote in Sunday’s election. “From now on, I am no longer the candidate of one camp, but the president of all,”…