Yesterday, the Parliament of Catalonia entered a new phase in this legislature with the election of Anna Erra as president of the institution. The Catalan chamber, which since the restoration in 1980 had never changed its highest figure in the middle of the legislature, was in an interim situation, with the presidency suspended since the month of July. This circumstance has come to an end with the loss of deputy status of her predecessor, Laura Borràs, who had refused to resign at all times.
After failing to obtain an absolute majority in the first attempt, Erra, vice-president of Junts and until next week acting mayor of Vic, was elected in the second vote – secret and ballot box – with the support of 64 deputies from the groups parliamentarians from Junts i Esquerra – plus a symbolic vote for the CUP given by the impossibility of voting for former councilor LluÃÂs Puig–; 20 more than the 44 gathered by the second vice-president of the Bureau, the socialist Assumpta Escarp, who had the support of the commons and the PP – the same formula that Jaume Collboni wants for the PSC to head the Barcelona City Council.
In his first speech, Erra combined the institutional sense of the position he now occupies with the line marked by his predecessors, and wanted to pay tribute to the ex-president of the chamber Carme Forcadell, who in some forums has been booed by the most independence radicals these last months.
In his speech, Erra recalled Miquel Coll Alentorn, Convergència i Unió politician and president of the chamber between 1984 and 1988, when he asked for “tolerance and mutual respect” from all deputies, and the president of the Republican Generalitat Francesc Macià, which with the inauguration of the Parliament in 1932 claimed an institution of its own that would allow it to draw up its own laws and in Catalan.
On this last issue, Erra asked that the Catalan Chamber be “an example and a model in terms of the use and normalization of the Catalan language”, because, he justified, “it continues to be the minority language in its domain linguistic”. “I want to ask the deputies that our Parliament be an example of the normality of our language without prejudice, of course, to the other official languages ​​of Catalonia”, concluded the new president on this matter.
The post-convergence leader, moreover, pledged to exercise a “full presidency, with rigor and all its attributions”, and announced that she would travel all over Catalonia to listen to the needs of all citizens, and claimed that she came from Vic , from a region and not from the Catalan capital. “Not only will this Parliament have its doors open to everyone, but I intend to tour the country”, he said.
Also, the second authority of Catalonia assured that it will defend “the sovereignty of the Parliament above all” and the right to “debate, speak and vote on everything agreed by the groups”; and that he will also defend “the rights of all deputies”. “I will defend the institution from any external interference”, assured Erra, who emphasized that he will maintain the “democratic demand and defense of the political rights of the deputies” and also the “modernization and transparency of the institution” that was initiated, according to say, at the beginning of the legislature with Borràs as president.
In any case, for this reason, he asked all the members of the chamber to get involved in “the defense of the dignity and independence of the Parliament”, and to work to change the current rules that clash with the opinions issued by Human Rights Committee of the United Nations that point to the violation of political rights in some cases with the leaders of the 1-O. “If we want to be demanding, we have to start with ourselves”, he remarked.
Erra, who was a teacher for more than 20 years before taking the step into institutional politics at Vic City Council in 2007, will debut in plenary next week, with a monograph on education.
