Laura Borràs has assured this Tuesday that she does not plan to leave the presidency of Junts per Catalunya until the next congress of the formation -which according to what is foreseen in the statutes will be within three years-, one day after the leadership of her party decided to propose to Anna Erra as the next president of the Parliament to put an end to ten months of interim in the Catalan Chamber and relieve her in the institution.
The JxCat leader has indicated on TV3 that “she plans to be president until the next congress.” “I have not expressed any will to modify my position,” Borrà s remarked, sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to four and a half years in prison and 13 years of disqualification from holding public office for document fraud and prevarication at the time when he directed the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. The leader, despite her sentence, has said several times that she does not plan to leave political life, despite the fact that she cannot hold public office and clings to her organic position in the post-convergent space.
Within Junts there were sectors that advocated also making a change in the party’s presidency after the municipal elections on May 28, but the current electoral scenario, with the general elections on July 23, complicates that panorama. The most pragmatic wing of the party disagreed with Borrà s from the outset and already in July of last year, when she was suspended as a deputy due to her legal situation, there were those who expected her to take a step alongside her, at least in the Parliament. However, the president of the party has remained in limbo and in an unprecedented situation as a suspended president, a figure that she had not seen before. An attempt was also made to get her out of the party presidency at the time her sentence was known in the TSJC, but in pursuit of internal peace with the municipal authorities just around the corner, the scenario was dismissed.
In fact, Borrà s, through Aurora Madaula, her most trusted leader, had tried to ensure that Junts did not propose anyone to replace her in Parliament or condition the choice of the candidate, although in the end the one who had the most support was Erra, who was not the candidate advocated by Borrà s. Although yesterday she arrived together with the acting mayoress of Vic at the meeting of the Junts executive that anointed her to preside over the Chamber – she will be elected on Friday by the plenary session with the votes in favor of JxCat and ERC, and with the abstention of the CUP–, Borràs had avoided showing his support in the previous weeks. In addition, yesterday he admitted that in the analysis of the situation he had contemplated the possibility of not proposing anyone to denounce a situation that he considers unfair, as Madaula claimed at the time, but that option lacked internal support.
Thus, with the electoral scenario, any movement that could be orchestrated by the pragmatic wing of Junts is ruled out for now. In the national council, the party’s highest decision-making body between congresses, which is going to be held to analyze the results of the municipal elections, there are those who expected the voice to be raised about the situation of the president, but the appointment, which was scheduled for on June 3 and postponed to June 18, that melon is unlikely to open.
In another order of things, in the economic sphere, Borrà s has assured on TV3 that he does not plan to “ask for anything” from the Parliament. In any case, he considers that he does deserve some retribution. “Any benefit that corresponds to the actions carried out in the Parliament, for the work done, it is evident that I would have earned it more than enough,” the leader pointed out.
