Losing public confidence

By Jason Moore THE latest opinion polls make bad reading for Spanish Prime Minister Rodriguez Zapatero, his popularity has nose-dived, down almost 10 points since the last opinion poll. But I don´t think anyone, not even Zapatero, should be surprised. His handling of the economic slowdown has been poor; he refused to admit that anything was wrong with the economy until two weeks ago by which time unemployment had risen and all indicators were pointing to a major economic slowdown. Obviously, Zapatero knew that the economy was in trouble but what he was attempting to do was keep-up public confidence. Once the words economic crisis are banded about, people start losing confidence and an economic problem becomes a crisis because people simply stop spending. Unfortunately, for Zapatero his plan failed miserably and instead of trying to keep up public confidence the voters have lost confidence in him. Politically speaking he shouldn´t be too concerned his rival, Mariano Rajoy, of the Partido Popular is doing even worse. His opinion poll rating slumped to just 26 percent. Both Zapatero and Rajoy need to win back public confidence, especially now, because of the economic uncertainty.