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Spain govt pays price for Iraq
15/03/2004 07:25 - (SA)
Madrid, Spain - Spain's ruling conservatives, saddled with allegations they made their country a target for al-Qaeda, crashed to defeat in general elections - the first time a government that backed the US-led Iraq invasion has been voted out of office.
The loss on Sunday at the hands of the Socialists also deals a blow to the United States because Spain's next prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, has pledged to bring home the 1, 300 troops Spain has stationed in Iraq when their tour of duty ends in July.
Zapatero fell short of a majority in Parliament and will need help to form a government. But it was still a spectacular, lopsided - and bittersweet - triumph that capped four tumultuous days beginning with Thursday's terror attacks in Madrid, which killed 200 people and wounded 1 500. Critics of the government said it had provoked the attacks by backing the Iraq war.
Next came millions-strong, nationwide street rallies against the railway bombings, smaller ones against the increasingly beleaguered government, the arrest of five suspects in the bombings, and a reported al-Qaeda claim of responsibility in a videotape.
Ignored
In one fell swoop, voters have ousted Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, whose party was favoured to win just days ago, even though he brought Spain eight straight years of economic growth, made it a founding member of the euro single currency, cut unemployment in half and brought a degree of prominence to a long-ignored country.
With 99 percent of the votes counted, the Socialists soared from 125 seats to 164 in the outgoing 350-seat legislature. The ruling Popular party fell from 183 to 148. It cannot try to form a coalition because it has no virtually no allies in the legislature, where it had enjoyed a majority and was often accused of riding roughshod over opponents.
Rodriguez Zapatero started his victory speech by remembering those killed in the railway bombings. "At this moment I think of the lives that were broken by terror on Thursday," he said.
"My most immediate priority will be to fight terrorism," he said.
Pre-election polls had favoured the ruling party to win handily.
But on election day voters expressed anger with the government, accusing it of provoking the Madrid attacks by supporting the US-led invasion of Iraq, which a vast majority of Spaniards opposed.
The government had insisted that its prime suspect in Thursday's rail bombings was the armed Basque separatist group ETA, even as evidence mounted of an Islamic link in the bombings.
The government was accused of withholding information on the investigation to save the election.
Throughout Sunday, voters said they lost faith in the ruling party.
"I wasn't planning to vote, but I am here today because the Popular Party is responsible for murders here and in Iraq," said Ernesto Sanchez-Gey, 48, who voted in Barcelona.
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