The PNV has put an end to the era of Íñigo Urkullu; Arnaldo Otegi has been removed from the EH Bildu poster. They are two notable departures from the Basque electoral contest, known suddenly and in a period of only 24 hours. Thus, a new scenario opens in Euskadi, with renewed leaders and without a clear favorite in what will be one of the most close and transcendental elections in recent times. At stake is who takes over the supremacy of nationalism.
The two main Basque parties have decided to present new faces (the PSE-EE and the PP already did so a few weeks before) while waiting for the Lehendakari to put an end to the 12th Basque legislature, which cannot be extended beyond July 2024. Both the PNV and EH Bildu have justified these movements by the need to address a total renewal and present themselves with candidates who better connect with a generation of voters who are already installed in the post-terrorism era after the end of ETA.
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“The change in posters,” says Itziar García Carretero, a political communication consultant, “is the response to indicators that Basque society feels a certain disaffection and distance with the current ruling class. The challenge is to get a strategic positioning right that manages to excite the voter.” Now it remains to be seen if these movements manage to mobilize an electorate that four years ago turned its back on the parties, which was reflected in an abstention that was close to 50%.
“It is not a substitution, it is a succession,” the Peneuvista president, Andoni Ortuzar, assured this week, to try to undermine the bid to replace Urkullu with Imanol Pradales, provincial deputy for Infrastructure in Bizkaia, an unknown outside the batzokis. On the other hand, Otegi explained his withdrawal like this: “My place is not in Parliament, but in the center of Basque politics.”
Imanol Zubero, doctor in Sociology and professor at the University of the Basque Country, maintains that “the PNV has made a change in a forced way and with a changed pace. In the case of Bildu, it is an operation designed to replace the PNV, because it is worth remembering that Herri Batasuna was born for that. For many years he insisted on doing it through the path of rupture and now he has realized that the path of reform is better.” This reality is already being observed in Congress: “The PNV is no longer the Basque party that negotiates in Madrid, because Bildu is also there,” says Zubero.
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Another political observer, a law professor who prefers to hide his name, says: “EH Bildu breathes easier without Urkullu at the head of the PNV, and sees within reach the bypass that he has been pursuing for years. Urkullu offered his party that transversal vote that was not strictly nationalist, the support of many people who saw in him the absence of glamor but who at the same time identified him with good sense, discipline to the point of boredom and the ability to ensure that politics “It becomes a roller coaster.”
Iñaki Galdos, political analyst and former leader of Hamaikabat (a split from Eusko Alkartasuna), believes that the PNV has failed in its forms, but has been right with the chosen candidate: “Urkullu’s departure has been very noisy because it has been poorly managed, but the decision is consistent with the need to stop the electoral setback. Pradales is a good poster and has the advantage of having the entire story to build.”
The PNV is approaching the regional elections with a certain deterioration in its brand, the result of the accumulated wear and tear after 12 years in the autonomous government. In the 2020 Basque elections he led EH Bildu by 11 percentage points (100,000 more votes), but that margin has been narrowing since then. First, in this year’s municipal elections (the pro-independence coalition was only 2.5 points behind, but won more mayoralties) and then, in the July general elections that the socialists won in Euskadi (there was a technical tie between PNV and Bildu, with only 1,100 votes difference in favor of the first). Ortuzar’s party, according to Zubero’s vision, faces a “generational decline” because “traditionally, its electorate has been at the demographic peak and that aging voter is disappearing.” On the other hand, the left abertzale “he has known how to expand his space with a more moderate and pragmatic discourse.” “The absence of ETA is allowing it to attract youth, student, environmentalist, feminist sectors… in which the PNV does not have as much weight,” he adds.
ETA’s violence was, during the years it was active, the main concern of the Basques. A decade ago, two years after the announcement of the “definitive cessation” of terrorist actions, it had already fallen to eighth place on the list of problems, according to surveys carried out by the Basque Government. Currently, after 12 years without attacks and five years after the dissolution of ETA, terrorism is no longer on the list. The concerns now go elsewhere: the labor market, public health, housing or citizen insecurity.
Faced with this scenario, Otegi steps aside and makes way for an applicant with no stripes in the era of terrorism. “Arnaldo,” Zubero points out, “has too much of a past. He has the entire past before him and the entire future behind him.” Otegi already presented himself as a candidate for president of Euskal Herritarrok in 1998 and 2001. He was also at the head of the list in 2016, the year he was released from prison, but the Electoral Board then backed his candidacy because he was disqualified from voting after his conviction. for him Bateragune casewhich years later was annulled.
Another observer analyzes it this way: “Faulkner said that the past is never dead, it is not even past. “Otegi’s backpack is too heavy.” Galdos doubts that the sovereigntist leader had made this decision more than a year ago: “The Otegi option was on the table, but the PNV’s decision to dispense with Urkullu precipitated his move. It was very significant that, after the Lehendakari’s speech at the General Policy plenary session, Otegi, and not a representative of his parliamentary group, appeared before the media at the Parliament headquarters to offer Bildu’s political assessment.
A victory for EH Bildu is possible, judging by what the polls say. Another thing is access to power. That is unlikely, unless the PNV fails. The PNV-PSE alliance, which has allowed them to govern the main Basque institutions since 2015, represents an obstacle for the coalition abertzale access Ajuria Enea. The socialists are going to play a determining role in governability. “The PSOE gave wings to Bildu in the last legislature, but in the negotiations to now invest Pedro Sánchez it has treated the PNV with more care,” Galdos remarks. Eneko Andueza, leader of the Basque socialists and candidate for lehendakari, has already made it clear this week: “If you ask me if I am going to make an EH Bildu candidate lehendakari, I will say no, and if you ask me if I will to form a Government with EH Bildu, I will say no.”
In the nationalist ranks this blockade of their acronym is not understood. If an agreement is possible in Navarra (EH Bildu supports President María Chivite, of the PSN) or in the central government, why not in the Basque Country?, they ask. Otegi has already gone ahead to say that PNV and PSE “are going in coalition” to these elections and have prepared a “labor salvation government”, in reference to an unnatural pact with the PP if they need the votes of this party whose sole purpose is not It would be both the defense of the country’s interests and the preservation of numerous jobs for these trainings in the Basque public administrations.
There is another relevant factor that also works against EH Bildu. The regulated procedure to invest the lehendakari, unlike the system provided in Congress to elect the president, prevents the blocking and repetition of regional elections. In the first vote, an absolute majority in Parliament is needed (38 votes out of a total of 75), but in the second round the candidate with the most votes would be appointed lehendakari. In an extreme but possible case, a candidate with a single vote could be elected lehendakari if the rest of the Chamber abstains. Urkullu was already named Basque president in 2012 with 27 votes (only those of his party), as many as abstentions and six more than those obtained then by Laura Mintegi (Bildu). The independentistas already know what it is to win and be relegated to the opposition. It happened recently, after the municipal elections last May, in the Provincial Council of Gipuzkoa and the town councils of Vitoria and Durango, where the coalition abertzale It was the most voted force. The PP, in these three cases, gave its votes for free to close the way to EH Bildu in those institutions.
The PSE and the PP start in “a more rested position,” says Zubero. The popular ones have chosen Javier de Andrés as the head of the list, who presents himself with a regionalist speech and defense of Basque autonomy: “A PP that is not anti-Basque, anti-Basque, anti-autonomy… penalizes his options. He has it complicated by the situation in Spanish politics. His connection with Vox may contaminate the Basque PP.” And he says: “PSE and PP depend on their own resources and tactics. On the other hand, the PNV and EH Bildu are making movements based on the opposite. There is a very close marking between the two and that complicates the situation a lot.”
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