Spain’s PM, facing economic woes, won’t run for re-election

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, plunging in popularity as he fights an economic crisis, announced yesterday he will not seek a third term in 2012 elections.

“I will not be a candidate in the next general elections,” he said in a televised speech to the party’s federal assembly in Madrid.

The prime minister called on his Socialist Party to hold an internal primary to elect a new person to lead the party in the general elections scheduled for March 2012.

He said that that process should begin after regional and municipal elections on May 22, polls in which the Socialist Party (PSOE) is expected to suffer heavy losses.

Analysts said Deputy Prime Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, 59, one of the most powerful figures in the government, is seen as the most likely candidate to succeed Zapatero as party leader.

But Defence Minister Carme Chacon, 40, who has had a meteoric rise through the party, also has strong support.

Zapatero’s announcement follows months of speculation that the 50-year-old leader might not seek re-election.

The prime minister said that when he was first elected in 2004 he had already intended to remain head of government for only two terms.

“I had thought about this seven years ago, two terms are enough,” he said.

The prime minister said he did not want to “prolong the unnecessary speculation” and had made a decision that was the “most advisable” for the party, the country and for his family. He vowed to remain in office “until the last day” of his current mandate.

The Socialist Party has slumped in the opinion polls against the conservative opposition Popular Party (PP) of Mariano Rajoy as Zapatero attempts to push through painful austerity measures and labour market reforms to trim the public deficit and slash unemployment.

The Spanish economy plunged into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of the once booming property market.

The economy shrank 0.1 per cent in 2010 and the unemployment rate ended the year at 20.33 per cent, the highest in industrialised countries.

The government is seeking to reassure markets worried that its public deficit is unsustainably high and that the country could follow Greece and Ireland in seeking a debt bailout.

The Bank of Spain warned last Wednesday of slower-than-expected growth ahead and predicted the country would miss its key public deficit targets this year and next.

Zapatero said yesterday the government was committed to an “intense modernisation process” and had “a clear action programme for the remainder of the term” to overcome the crisis and promote economic recovery and job creation.

“Far from being daunted, we have continued with the reforms, laboriously searching for parliamentary support to move them forward.”

Zapatero first took office in a surprise election win over Rajoy on March 14, 2004, just three days after the Madrid train bombings which killed 191 people.

He drew support from many Spaniards who accused the conservatives of attempting a cover-up by insisting that the Basque separatist group ETA was to blame even though evidence pointed to Islamic extremists angered by Madrid’s role in Iraq.