MADRID (Reuters) – Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has rejected a proposal made by conservatives’ leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo to support his People’s Party for a two-year government term, Feijoo told reporters on Wednesday.
Feijoo’s party won the most seats but came short of a working majority in a national election last month and he is trying to garner support in the lower house to secure premiership in a vote on Sept. 27. He had asked Sanchez, a Socialist, in a meeting earlier on Wednesday to back him in exchange for policy pacts.
“Unfortunately, what I have obtained, as far as I understood, is a no,” Feijoo told reporters after the meeting.
Sanchez did not talk to the media, but his Socialist party’s spokesperson Pilar Alegria confirmed to reporters the party will not support Feijoo’s premiership bid.
Sanchez said earlier this month he also intended to seek premiership.
In a written document handed to Sanchez, the conservative candidate to premiership had said the two-year government would be extended if both parties agreed. Legislatures last four years in Spain.
Last week, King Felipe handed Feijoo the mission of forming the government.
A candidate for premiership needs to secure an absolute majority of at least 176 in the 350-member assembly in a first vote, or a simple majority of more votes in favour than against in a second vote held within two days of the first.
Far-right group Vox and two regional parties have said they will back Feijoo, giving him 172 votes, but he still needs to convince an array of regionalist groupings to back him or abstain in a second vote to be able to form a government.
On Aug. 17, Sanchez’s Socialists party managed to secure 178 votes with support from left-wing and regionalist parties to get its candidate elected as speaker.
(Reporting by Emma Pinedo and Inti Landauro, editing by Andrei Khalip and Tomasz Janowski)
