They want to see her out, but they don’t want to kick her out. They want her to go alone and that won’t happen. That is the reading that Laura Borràs’ environment makes of the pressure she receives from the opposition, and also from Esquerra, a partner of Junts in the Government, to take a step back due to her legal case related to the alleged splitting of contracts when she directed the Institution of Catalan Letters.
Last Tuesday, when the pressure grew more and more, the president of the Parliament decided to send a clear message to her detractors: that she will not resign, that she feels innocent and that if they want to see her out, they will have to kick her out by applying article 25.4 of the regulation of the institution –which applies to cases of corruption–, although she opts for another route, on 25.1, so that her partners give her support by voting an opinion and thus preserve her status as deputy and president of the Chamber.
The Republicans advocate that 25.2 be applied and that Borràs step aside, herself, provisionally, from the time an oral trial is opened until there is a resolution, but the also president of Junts has already warned that in no case will she do so. “It is not repression, it is malpractice”, they justify in Esquerra.
“If they want to see it outside, they will have to remove it, and that has a cost and associated wear and tear,” they point out from JxCat. Borràs’s entourage believes that the more they ask her to take a step beside her, the more forced they will later be in ERC to vote to suspend her. A fact that advances a few convulsive months in the Catalan scenario, say sources consulted.
And in Junts –which for now has shown him granite support–, even those who accept that there could have been “malpractice” on the part of Borràs pronounced in a similar sense. “It is quite possible that she ends up disqualified, we already know that, but the question is how, and Esquerra has a role to play there,” says a leader. “They will have to explain what they do, even if they hide behind the fact that it is cleanliness in the face of corruption,” he adds. “We will not do the same when Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó’s turn comes,” they conclude in JxCat, although the Republicans make it clear that one case and the other are not comparable.
Meanwhile, the second summit against the structural causes of corruption was held yesterday in Parliament and Borràs, who participated, took advantage of the event to put forward arguments in his defence. He assured that in “democracies corrupted by authoritarian tics” corruption “can cease to be a problem that has to be eliminated and become, perversely, a weapon to combat political dissidence.”
And today, after Tuesday’s appearance did not bury the debate, Borràs exhibits muscle. He goes to the Ateneu de Barcelona, ??to a tribute in which he will be recognized by the world of culture in which former presidents Artur Mas, Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra will participate, as well as Jordi Turull and the Junts staff. It will be the link to a manifesto that has already collected more than 7,000 adhesions.
