The response of the EH Bildu candidate for Lehendakari, Pello Otxandiano, in an interview on Cadena Ser, avoiding using the term “terrorist” to refer to ETA continues to mark the news on the Basque campaign, although with less intensity since the issue lost strength in the ETB candidate debate. The head of the nationalist list has stated that he “regrets” the response he gave and has asked for forgiveness from the victims of terrorism if with those words he hurt “their sensitivity.”
Otxandiano stated last Monday when asked about ETA that it was an “armed group” and that it depends on the “different points of view” to consider it terrorist or not.
“What is terrorism today? Is what Israel is doing against Palestine terrorism? We can discuss the considerations around terrorism, what is terrorism and what is not terrorism. But much further, it seems to me that the issue is diagnosing in political terms how political conflicts are overcome, and I believe that in this country we have made a lot of progress,” she said in that interview in Ser.
In the last few hours he has rectified that response: “I regret having given that answer and not having responded by saying that in the campaign we have to take this issue out of the electoral context.”
The EH Bildu politician has highlighted, in interviews on Radio Euskadi and Telebilbao, that he “speaks and approaches” ETA victims and “understands their pain”, and has assured that he feels “absolute respect” for all of them.
Otxandiano, likewise, has recognized that one of the political sectors “that today belongs to EH Bildu was an agent of pain in the past”, but he has pointed out that “later it was part of the solution and today Bildu is in a position to be an agent.” of reconciliation”.
“Proof of this is that on my lists there are people threatened by ETA in their day,” he highlighted, and insisted that EH Bildu “is being very forceful and very assertive on the path towards reconciliation and construction of a plural memory of respect and reparation to all victims”.
In his opinion, this coalition “is taking steps, surely insufficient” towards that objective, and has admitted that “many things are still missing.”
Otxandiano has emphasized that this process “has to be multilateral”, although he has assured that they do not ask “for anything from anyone.” “We are not in reproach,” he said.
“We do what we understand we have to do and we are taking positive steps, but those steps and that work must be done discreetly, out of the media spotlight and out of the context and electoral interests,” he concluded.
