Madrid:
Spaniard Pedro Sánchez said on Monday he would remain prime minister after threatening to resign over what he has labeled a campaign of political intimidation by the right.
“I have decided to stay,” he said in a long-awaited public speech that drew a line under the days of political uncertainty that have gripped the country for the past five days.
The 52-year-old Socialist leader, who has been in office since 2018, wrote a letter to the public on Wednesday saying he is taking time to consider his possible resignation after a court in Madrid opened a preliminary investigation into his wife Begona Gomez had confirmed for suspected influence peddling. and corruption.
Denying this step was a 'political calculation'. Sanchez said he had to “stop and think” about the growing polarization in politics, which he said was increasingly driven by “deliberate disinformation.”
“We have allowed this filth to corrupt our political and public life for too long with poisonous methods that were unthinkable just a few years ago… Do we really want this for Spain?” he asked.
“I have acted with a clear conviction: either we say 'enough is enough', or this degradation of public life will define our future and condemn us as a country.”
He said his decision to stay on was “decisively influenced” by the massive show of support outside his Socialist party's headquarters in Madrid, where thousands of emotional supporters chanted: “Pedro, stay!”
The public prosecutor's office on Thursday asked for the investigation into Begona Gomez to be closed, but Sánchez, an expert on political survival who has made a career out of taking political gambles, remained silent.
He was due to launch his party's campaign on Thursday for the May 12 regional elections in Catalonia, in which his Socialists hope to oust pro-independence forces from power.
– Campaign 'Intimidation' –
The court opened an investigation into Sanchez's wife following a complaint from the anti-corruption pressure group Manos Limpias (Clean Hands), whose leader has ties to the far right.
Shortly after Sanchez's letter bombshell about
Although the court did not provide details about the case, the online news site El Confidencial said it was related to its ties to several private companies that received government funding or won government contracts.
Sánchez has been vilified by right-wing opponents and the media because his minority government relies on support from the far left and the Catalan and Basque separatist parties to pass laws.
They are particularly angry over his decision to grant amnesty to hundreds of Catalan separatists who face legal action over their role in the northeastern region's failed push for independence in 2017.
That amnesty, in exchange for the support of Catalan separatist parties, must still be definitively approved in parliament.
The opposition has since Wednesday mocked Sánchez's decision to withdraw from his public duties in an effort to rally his supporters.
“A head of government cannot show himself as a teenager and have everyone run after him and beg him not to leave and not to get angry,” right-wing opposition leader and Popular Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo said on Thursday. .
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