The suspended president of the Parliament and president of JuntsxCat, Laura Borràs, has reproached the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, for his “undignified behavior” before the members of the European Parliament Investigation Commission on espionage with the Pegasus program.
Specifically, Borràs, in a letter sent to the president with the letterhead of president of the Chamber, reproaches him for yesterday ignoring “the fallacious arguments” with which the former Minister of the Interior Juan Ignacio Zoido justified before him the spying on Puigdemont and the investigations on the Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR).
In his speech yesterday, Zoido reminded Aragonés that States have the obligation to investigate organizations and movements that “may be a danger” to the safety of citizens and alluded to contacts with Russia around Puigdemont coinciding with the referendum independence supporter of 1-O and the investigations into the Defense Committees of the Republic (CDR) for crimes of terrorism. “I do not have contacts with Russia, and you spoke of other political leaders in Catalonia,” replied Aragonès, who wanted to focus the question on his own situation. “As for me, what evidence is there to justify being spied on by the CNI,” he questioned the former minister and member of the European Parliamentary delegation.
The president of the Catalan Chamber, who is suspended from office pending her sentence for the alleged splitting of contracts during her time at the head of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, recalls in the letter to Aragonès that one of her “first obligations” is the defense of the institutions of Catalonia, “among which is precisely the Presidency of the Generalitat”.
“Disregarding the fallacious arguments” with which Zoido justified spying on Puigdemont is for Borràs “an attitude unworthy” of the responsibility he bears, since, according to the Junts leader, he suggests that “perhaps a certain context justifies the espionage to the highest authority of Catalonia” which, as he reminded the president, “was complying with the mandate of the citizens expressed democratically at the polls”.
The president of Junts takes advantage of the letter to denounce the “partisan bias” that, in her opinion, involves the fact that the delegation of the European Parliament only met with people from the Republican Left, when the victims of this “unacceptable case of espionage” , among which it is included, suppose a “transversal space that also affects civil society”. “All the people, entities and estates that are part of this group deserve the firm defense of their democratic rights by the highest authority in the country,” she claims.
In line with this, Borràs urges Aragonès to reflect on “the need to preserve the risk of facing from partisan perspectives the fight against the repression that the Spanish State continues to exert on the independence movement and of which political espionage is one of the most scandalous episodes”.
This morning, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, also accused Aragonès of not defending Puigdemont. In Junts le “dolió mucho”, Turull assured in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio, that “there was no defense” of the president in his response to Zoido’s “lies”, and that he would limit himself to saying “that he had nothing that see” with this case.
