(Bloomberg) -- Spain’s Podemos will abstain in a parliamentary confidence vote if acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez doesn’t change the terms he has offered to the anti-austerity party in return for its support for his bid to stay on as prime minister.
Sanchez rejected Podemos’s latest proposal, which was to form a “trial” coalition with his Socialist party to govern together until a new budget is approved. That offer made on Thursday still stands, Podemos’s leader Pablo Iglesias said in an interview with broadcaster La Sexta on Friday.
The acting prime minister needs Podemos’s support to ensure he can win the backing of parliament. Sanchez failed in a previous attempt to form a government when Podemos abstained in vote held in July.
Once the budget is approved, the coalition could be disbanded and Podemos would offer support to a stable Socialist-led government but not as a formal partner, Iglesias said.
Sanchez has repeatedly said he doesn’t want a coalition with Podemos due to certain unbridgeable policy differences between them -- including on how to deal with the Catalan political crisis. If a government hasn’t been formed by Sept. 23, Spain is headed to elections in November.
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