“We have not been able to listen to him [Carles Puigdemont], because who we have listened to in this case is the effective candidate, who is Mr. Rull.” At ERC they are convinced that Carles Puigdemont will not keep his promise to return to Catalonia for the investiture debate and once the Amnesty law is approved. They put their hand in the fire so much that today the Republican spokesperson Raquel Sans has described the former councilor and number three on the Junts list, Josep Rull, as an “effective candidate.”
The debate this Monday morning organized by Pimec is a sign for Esquerra that Rull is going to have a prominent role, not only during the pre-campaign and the electoral campaign, but also after the Parliament elections on May 12. Even above the second in the JxCat candidacy, the businesswoman Anna Navarro. Rull was the one who participated on behalf of the post-convergent ranks in the colloquium along with a good part of the candidates from the other parties, among them Pere Aragonès, since Carles Puigdemont is still under an arrest warrant in Spain. The leader of Junts has refused to participate electronically.
Rull can be part of the Junts list thanks to the repeal of the crime of sedition agreed between the PSOE and ERC and is one of the names that had even been mentioned to lead the post-convergent candidacy in case Puigdemont renounced it.
In the formation chaired by Oriol Junqueras, they maintain that the Spanish high judiciary is unpredictable and that the terrorism investigation following the Tsunami case maintains uncertainty for all those investigated. So much so that today there are more than half a dozen people mentioned in the case who have taken up residence in Switzerland, at least until the criminal oblivion law is approved. Among them is the general secretary of ERC, Marta Rovira, or the Republican deputy Ruben Wagensberg.
Sans has not only drawn the option of Rull being the effective candidate, but has also given rise to the possibility of Junts agreeing with the PSC if the socialists, led by Salvador Illa, come first in the elections. He has clung to the words of Xavier Trias, leader of the post-convergents in the Barcelona City Council. Trias assured this morning on Cadena Ser: “We will not govern with the socialists if we win… and if we don’t win, we will see, in life everything can change.”
For the Esquerra spokesperson “it is no surprise.” “Sociovergence is not news. In the Parliament, when it came to defending the interests of the usual ones, they have joined together in a shameless way,” Sans stressed. In any case, ERC does not even want to consider a third position in the parliamentary elections of May 12: “We go out to win so that they do not have to choose between the national horizon and improving the daily lives of citizens.
