Socialist candidate Rubalcaba fears opposition win in Spain

Socialist candidate Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba has said he is worried about what would happen to Spain should the right-wing Popular Party (PP) win an overall majority in Sunday's general elections. Rubalcaba, the former interior minister and spokesperson for the government of Jose Luis Zapatero, trails PP leader Mariano Rajoy by around 15 percent in the latest opinion polls. The predicted result would see Rubalcaba's Socialist Party (PSOE) suffer a historic defeat in the upcoming elections, while giving the PP an overall majority. Handicapped by the current economic crisis, Rubalcaba has spent much of the election campaign stressing that the PP have not said what their economic policy will be should they be elected. Speaking in the El Pais newspaper on Friday, the last day of the campaign, Rubalcaba warned that the PP's vagueness on the economy and other issues such as abortion, gay marriages and issues such as the end of Basque separatist group ETA, is indicative of a hidden agenda. "If the polls are shown to be right in the end, what I am really worried about is that the right wing manages to obtain absolute power, because that is the situation that we will find ourselves in," said Rubalcaba. "Absolute power means they will hold all of the power, in the town halls, in the regional authorities and in the state, as well as institutional power, the media and in the economy. It is a power that the right have never had," he warned in a clear attempt to sway dissatisfied Socialist voters on Sunday. "What I am calling for at the end of this campaign is a strong Socialist party. The stronger we are, the better it will be for democracy in Spain," he insisted. Rubalcaba admitted that the situation in Spain, where there are almost five million people out of work and where the economy has again stagnated in the third quarter of the year, was bad. But he asked people to think hard before casting their votes for Rajoy. "We have never had a general election where the people have been as worried about the future as they are now. But I believe that before voting, people have to think more than they have done in other elections," said Rubalcaba. "We are not holding normal elections, we are deciding how to come out of the deepest crisis that Spain has known. We all know that the crisis needs strong measures, so we are not talking just about the economy, but also the welfare state and social questions. We are talking about the collection of rules that we have given Spain over the past 30 years," he said.