The three candidates for the presidency of ERC are very critical of the stage that the party is closing, but each of them blames different people for it. In the debate that the three candidates held this Tuesday, Oriol Junqueras attacked the policies of the Government of Pere Aragonès, which he blamed for having “disconnected” from the priorities of the social majority. Meanwhile, Xavier Godàs and Helena Solà have considered that it is Junqueras himself who should be responsible for the decisions made.
Godàs, the candidate of Nova Esquerra Nacional, the sector considered aligned with Marta Rovira, has assured that his priority is to re-anchor ERC in the space of the pro-independence left. He has insisted on the need for the party to have greater ideological clarity and has exemplified the ambiguity in Junqueras himself, who he has highlighted that he has not been clear about what he voted on the investiture of Salvador Illa.
The two rivals of the candidate for re-election have agreed to demand “self-criticism” from Junqueras, who they have recalled has been leading the party for 13 years. “We need to open a new stage,” said Godàs, who indicated that if he had been president he would have taken responsibility for everything that happens in the party. “I hope you never find yourself in prison for four years,” Junqueras responded.
The former president of the Republicans, who is running with the Militancia Decidim candidacy, has avoided revealing whether he voted favorably or not for Illa’s investiture, but he has assured that his priority is for the PSC to comply with the signed agreement. If it does not do so, he said, ERC should “drop” the socialists from all governments, a proposal that, with various accents, all the contenders have highlighted.
Helena Solà, Foc Nou candidate, recalled that ERC has lost voters in all the elections in which it has stood and has attributed that fall to a specific moment: “We lost when we abandoned independence,” said Solà, who He has considered that the party’s priority should be to “stop being a crutch for the PSC.”
For his part, Junqueras has opted for a speech with a clear social and labor nature. “We have to embrace the peasants,” he has come to say, after veiledly criticizing the previous ERC Government, whom he has accused of not having been sufficiently sensitive to workers in the countryside, industry or public services.
“When the irrigators of the Canal d’Urgell ask for a commitment to the modernization of the canal and do not obtain it, and then the minister of the socialist Government gives it to them, they feel abandoned by us,” he exemplified. He has also criticized the school voucher, one of Aragonès’ flagship policies, which he has suggested is not very redistributive.
While Junqueras has opted for the more social identity of ERC and Solà has taken up the independence flag, Godàs has placed himself somewhere in the middle. “We are not a little bit of the PSC or a little bit of Junts depending on the context. We are the national left and we have to contribute to the national liberation movement like ERC,” Godàs assured.
The Rovirista candidate has also promised to be able to make “republican alliances”, with his eyes on the CUP and a part of the Comuns, to carry out a “republican assault on the city councils” in the 2027 elections.
Godàs, in this case coinciding with Solà, has also demanded a structure that separates the party from the governments, that is, in which the president of ERC is not the candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat. This is one of the issues that distances both of them the most from Junqueras, who has never hidden that he aspires to run for office.
In fact, the electoral question has been one of the axes of the debate. “I know that on October 30 [día de la votación que decidirá la presidencia de ERC] It is important, but what is more important is that it will be done later, because the important thing is to build a shared project to obtain the best possible results in the elections,” Junqueras assured, highlighting himself as an electoral asset.
Nor has the controversy over the posters against Pasqual and Ernest Maragall, which came from the party itself, been left out of the debate. In this case, Junqueras and Solà have agreed, when they have assured that they will take the case to an audit, while Godàs has stressed that he trusts the party’s own structures to clarify the case.
Despite the exchange of proposals and barbs at times, the debate between the three candidates has been white glove and on many points they have shown a certain complicity. “It’s normal, we share the game,” Godàs reasoned. All of them have invited each other to “help” and collaborate after the congressional process, aware that, in the weak situation in which ERC finds itself, everyone must pull together so that the party does not break up.
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