Spain's ex-PM Rajoy steps down as People's Party leader

MADRID - Former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced Tuesday that he was stepping down as president of the right-wing People's Party (PP) and abandoning politics.

Rajoy made his announcement in a televised press conference in Spain, just five days after his government was ousted from power after losing a no-confidence vote proposed by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, who was sworn in as his replacement on Saturday.

The defeat made Rajoy the first Spanish prime minister to lose his job after losing a no-confidence vote, a fact he made reference to as he stepped down as leader of his party.

"Someone who has never won an election is now prime minister of the government," he said.

Rajoy became the president of the PP in 2003, but despite spending 15 years at the head of his party and contesting five general elections, he was only able to win an overall majority in 2011 when the PP swept to power on the back of the economic crisis.

He was twice defeated by the Socialists under Jose Luis Zapatero in 2004 and 2008, while the 2015 election saw the PP vote fall from 45 percent to 28.7 percent in the midst of various high-profile corruption scandals, such as the Punica and Gurtel cases.

With no party able to form a government in the wake of that election, Rajoy remained as acting prime minister and led his party to victory in June 2016, when the PP gained 33 percent of the vote and were able to form a government with the support of center-right party Ciudadanos.

However, the Gurtel cash for favors scandal remained a problem for Rajoy and he made history when he became the first Spanish leader in office to testify as a witness in the trial in 2017.

The judges' finding in the case announced two weeks ago that the PP had benefited economically from the scandal led Sanchez to present the no-confidence motion which ended 6.5 years of the PP government and ultimately ended Rajoy's political career.

A party Congress will now be called to choose a new leader for the PP with no clear favorite to replace Rajoy at the head of the party. Cristina Cifuentes could have been one of the favorites, but the former President of the Madrid Autonomous Community was also recently forced to abandon her political career after it emerged she had been granted a Master's degree without attending class, sitting exams or presenting her final thesis. She was also shown in a video allegedly shoplifting two jars of face cream.

Other candidates could be the current leader of the region of Galicia, Alberto Nunez Feijoo, former defense minister and party secretary-general, Maria Dolores de Cospedal, and former deputy prime minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.