Rajoy refuses to be written off as rivals seek ouster

Bloomberg

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy is fighting to save his government from collapse after a slew of harsh jail sentences handed down by judges in Madrid exposed his party’s Achilles heel on corruption.
The Socialists, the biggest opposition group, filed a no-confidence motion against him and Ciudadanos, another party, threatened to do the same unless he calls early elections. The bid to unseat him came less than two days after he pulled off a political coup for his minority government by guiding its budget through parliament.
Rajoy’s sudden vulnerability sows seeds of uncertainty for investors who have cheered his government’s record of nurturing an economic expansion that is now stretching into its fifth year. Yet opinion polls have shown support for his government plummeting as the Catalan independence crisis and ongoing corruption scandals continue to blight the People’s Party.
“Rajoy is a well-seasoned politician so he has shown his experience in these slippery situations,” said Miguel Marin, a founder of Analisis Economico Integral, who previously worked as an adviser to the PP. “Nonetheless, he is in a very weak situation.”
The trigger for the opposition assault on his government was the release of a court ruling on a long-running corruption case involving the PP’s finances. The National Court in Madrid sentenced the party’s former Treasurer Luis Barcenas to more than 33 years in jail and also punished the party itself with a fine for being the beneficiary of a financing scam that lasted for a decade. Rajoy’s chances of survival rely on the voter divisions that recent opinion polls have highlighted.