The general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, has opted for Carles Puigdemont to be the candidate of the formation in the parliamentary elections called this afternoon by Pere Aragonès for the next 12 May after the rejection of the Catalan budgets.
Without mentioning the former president of the Generalitat and asked about the Junts candidate for these elections in the Parliament, Turull recalled that he has always said publicly that the best candidate “is the one we all have in our heads”, in a clear allusion to Puigdemont, and added that by virtue of the Amnesty that tomorrow sees the green light in Congress “this man that we all have in mind will be able to be in Parliament on the day of the investiture.”
The former president of the Generalitat himself has confirmed from Brussels that there is calendar compatibility with the amnesty although he has not made a decision on the matter, which he will have to decide after speaking with his lawyers and the party. “It is very reasonable that I could be in the next investiture debate of the president of the Generalitat,” explained the MEP, adding that he would “be very excited.”
The fact is that the post-electoral calendar places the constitution of the Parliament probably in the first half of June, when the Amnesty law will foreseeably be approved and in force. And a first investiture debate may take place at the end of June, at which time the arrest warrants against Puigdemont should fall. In this sense, the judges, who are in charge of applying it, will have two months to do so, that is, until July. However, Turull himself assumes that the judges could prevent Puigdemont’s presence in the Catalan Chamber. “We have seen the Spanish justice system do everything,” the national leader has warned.
The allusion to the presence of the current MEP in the Chamber is not trivial in an investiture plenary session, as it recalls the suspension of the investiture plenary session in January 2018 by Roger Torrent as president of the Chamber at the request of the Constitutional Court, which prevented Puigdemont’s telematic election.
Turull has accused Aragonès of calling the elections on May 12 due to “electoral calculations” precisely so that Puigdemont cannot run, an attitude that he has called “sectarian”, but added that “it could backfire.” .
Junts will take “the decisions it has to make”, “it will take all the consequences”, warned the post-convergent leader, who, before pointing out Puigdemont, had said that they would present someone who has “the nation in his head and in the heart”.
However, Turull has been very harsh with the president of the Generalitat and with the decision to leave the country with a government in place to manage the drought in May, which he has called “recklessness.” Furthermore, he has criticized that the electoral advance is “the confirmation of a failure of which the president was warned.” After remembering that Aragonès was invested with the “historic 52% of the pro-independence vote”, the post-convergent leader has accused him of “dissolving the pro-independence unity and of being on good terms with the PSOE.”
He has also expressed the opinion that after his party left the Government, it has gone “from mess to mess” to accuse ERC of making a “partisan calculation” with the objective, in his opinion, of wearing down Junts. However, what ERC has done, in Turull’s opinion, is “weaken Catalonia.”
