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Spanish PM Rajoy fails to announce expected cabinet reshuffle

Xinhua, June 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Thursday failed to announce the changes to his cabinet which had widely been expected.

Speaking after a meeting of his Popular Party's Executive Committee in Madrid, Rajoy announced some changes in the party organization in order to prepare for November's General election in Spain, but the widely expected reshuffle failed to emerge.

It had been generally expected Rajoy react in the face of the PP's disappointing results in the local and regional elections on May 24th, which saw his party's share of the vote fall to 27 percent, well below what he needs to retain his overall majority in November.

Rajoy had promised changes in the wake of the vote which saw the PP lose control of all but two of Spain's 10 largest cities, instead, he discussed what he saw as the reasons for his party's poor showing.

While insisting that the PP remained Spain's most voted for party, the Prime Minister explained that the effects of the economic crisis over the past four years, as well as corruption scandals had caused them to lose votes from the center, while also leading to many habitual voters to abstain in the May vote.

With just five months until the election he said the PP needed to explain its policies better to the Spanish people, adding his party would hold a conference on 11th and 12th July in order to fix their main proposals in order to try and win re-election.

He also criticized opposition forces, describing them as an "anti-PP front," and warned that should his party fail to win re-election it could jeopardize Spain's nascent economic recovery.

The failure to shuffle the cabinet on Thursday means Rajoy has only made three changes to his cabinet in three and a half years as Prime Minister. The first of those was in April 2014 when Miguel Aries Canete left the Ministry of Agriculture to lead the PP campaign in the elections for the European Parliament.

September 2014 saw Alberto Ruiz Gallardon resign as Justice Minister after the failure of the government to implement his controversial abortion reforms, while Ana Mato was forced to resign as Health Minister after being implicated in a corruption scandal. Endit