A wave of nationwide protests against soaring unemployment and the economic crisis overshadowed local elections in Spain yesterday in which the ruling Socialist Party faced the prospect of a humiliating defeat.
The predicted rout would be a bad omen for the party ahead of general elections scheduled for March next year, when the conservative Popular Party is expected to romp back into office after eight years in opposition.
More than 34 million people were eligible to vote yesterday, choosing 8,116 mayors, 68,400 town councilors and 824 members of regional parliaments for 13 of the 17 semi-autonomous regions.
Polls forecast devastating losses for the Socialists as voters take revenge for the destruction of millions of jobs and painful spending cuts, including to state salaries.
They predict the ruling party of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero will lose control of strongholds such as the cities of Barcelona, Seville and in the central region of Castilla-La Mancha.
It could even be short of an absolute majority in all the 13 regions.
Candidates from the two main parties have exchanged barbs over the economy and political corruption.
However, the campaigning and the predicted outcome have been largely obscured — and muddied by — a nationwide protest movement that began on May 15 by youths angry over joblessness, the economic crisis, politicians in general and corruption.
“The angry and the undecided decide today,” headlined the left-leaning newspaper Publico yesterday. “The effect of the protests becomes the main unknown of the regional and municipal elections.”
“From the streets to the polls,” Barcelona-based Periodico de Catalunya said.
Thousands of people have massed in city centers across the country in the biggest spontaneous protests since the property bubble burst in 2008 and plunged Spain into a recession from which it only emerged this year.
The crisis pushed Spain’s unemployment rate to 21.19 percent in the first quarter of this year, the highest in the industrialized world.
For under-25s, the rate in February was 44.6 percent, and about 800,000 young people are eligible to vote for the first time yesterday.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing