Oriol Junqueras, president of Esquerra Republicana, broke his silence this Tuesday after the debacle of his party last Sunday. Pere Aragonès, the face of a campaign that ended with the evaporation of 13 seats and 148,000 votes, had until then been the only face of defeat. One day after the president acting will announce that he is leaving the front line of politics, the former vice president He sets out to star in the reconstruction of a dejected formation and with the open leadership debate.
Junqueras, who blesses the decision to go to the opposition, maintains your letter the distances with respect to both Junts and the PSC, who have asked him to support them in their search for investiture. “It is up to others – in reference to the socialists and those of Carles Puigdemont’s party – to take the steps they consider appropriate to guarantee the stability and governability of the country,” says Junqueras, in a letter that sees the light after several meetings of the Republican leadership. “We understand and face the reflection required by the notice that citizens have given us. We will put your votes constructively at the service of the country,” he adds.
The letter reveals some self-criticism about the results — “the citizens have not trusted us, or our proposals or the way we explain them” — but it does not give many new clues about the big question that looms after Sunday’s elections. The president of ERC does not dedicate a single sentence to indicating who he would support for an investiture. Coherence aside, the arithmetic possibility that both the socialist Salvador Illa (with 42 seats) and Junts (has 36) can form a Government exists and depends on the votes of ERC. The second case is much more complex, requiring an abstention from the PSC to which the Illa party has already opposed.
“We do not want fer fly coloms [crear cortinas de humo] that paralyze us and generate more wear and tear and frustration,” he says in a section of the text, in a clear message to Junts. “We will not go through,” he explains in another paragraph, “by those who think that Catalonia can be governed from Madrid,” he adds in reference to Illa’s party. Junqueras is trying, for the moment, a thin third way whose robustness will be demonstrated as the plenary session of the Chamber’s constitution approaches, which has a deadline of June 10.
Last Monday, both Illa and Puigdemont appealed to Aragonès to support them in their respective attempts to run for office. The PSC, in addition to the Republicans, would need the common members (six seats) to achieve the absolute majority (68) and thus ensure that Illa was elected in the first vote. For the second, it would not be enough for Junqueras to abstain and it would be necessary, for example, for the PP. Such an operation, the founder of Junts warned, could involve letting Pedro Sánchez’s Government fall.
In Junts they see how the most coherent formula is for the independence movement to renew its mandate, despite no longer having an absolute majority. Puigdemont, who said that he would leave politics if he does not manage to be president, hopes that the CUP and ERC will support him in the first round of voting. Or that the PSC, in the second, abstains to facilitate its arrival at the Palau, despite having won the elections. The socialists flatly deny that possibility.
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“From today, no matter what happens, we will lead the alternative that will fight firmly and determinedly for the future of the country,” Junqueras states in another part of the letter, also making it somewhat clear that he contemplates all scenarios. And, furthermore, he looks the best to captain them. “I see myself capable and strong to continue working for our country and to do so, as always, from the place determined by militancy,” he continues.
Division in the Executive
After three consecutive electoral debacles, in Esquerra the debate on leadership is inevitable and the Executive is divided. Junqueras, responsible for the strategy that has brought ERC to its highest levels of power, now sees how his moral authority is not enough to avoid the internal criticism that, last year, he barely managed to contain. Aragonès’s decision to assume personal responsibility, which he praises in his letter, also exposes him.
Several voices in the party assume that an extraordinary congress will be held but they do not set a date for it, with the European elections on the horizon and the post-electoral negotiation still alive. Junqueras will, for the moment, have the last word on the pact policy and outside the Government will see how, for example, more than 300 senior officials are lost. He former president It has always placed the Catalan socialists as its ideological rival in Catalonia and they aspire to supplant it as a reference group for the left. An objective that has little chance of being achieved with a repeat election.
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