“Historical commitment” and “amnesty”. This was yesterday the respective bet of the Basque groups EH Bildu and PNB in ??the investiture session of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to whom both have denied support. Although the spokesperson of the PNB, Aitor Esteban, reproached the PP for its alliance with the extreme right of Vox, for the leader of the Abertzale group, Mertxe Aizpurua, the projects of Vox and the PP are fundamentally identical and reactionary.
“This is the historic commitment that we have come to propose: a historic commitment to lift the mortgages that still weigh on our nations and on the majority of workers”, concluded Aizpurua’s intervention, and called for everyone’s responsibility to assume a deeper of democracy and complete what the transition left unfinished. “There are many pending tasks (…) Bildu is ready, we hope we all are”.
Previously, Aizpurua had explained the commitment of the Abertzale formation to progressive policies aimed at the social majorities, both in the Basque Country and in the rest of the State, and showed off his party’s support for the progress achieved by the coalition Government , starting with the social shield with which the effects of the pandemic were mitigated.
In this sense, Aizpurua emphasized that Vox and the PP are part of the same reactionary coalition and said that “this week we will invest Mr. Feijóo as leader of the opposition” and, consequently, “we will open the phase for you, Mr. Sánchez, get enough support for his investiture”. Bildu recalled that the acting president “knows that for this he will have to listen to and attend to the demands of Basques and Catalans, he will have to give constructive answers to the national and social claims of our peoples and their social and working majorities”. Because “without the Basque, Catalan and Galician sovereignist lefts, this State would today be governed by the extreme right. Don’t forget it.”
The spokesman of the PNB, Aitor Esteban, for his part, reproached Núñez Feijóo for his political alliance with Vox as an insurmountable reason to support his investiture and mocked the alleged resignation of the PP to get a government that it is not within reach, because any agreement with the PNB and Junts would imply the rejection of the thirty votes of the extreme right of Vox. “To add our votes, he must start counting by subtracting 33. This is the whale in the pool.”
Esteban stressed that the incompatibility of the Jeltzal formation with Vox transcends the Spanish territorial debate and reaches the role of Spain in a Europe where the weight of authoritarian formations is growing and would cause deep concern and bring “consequences for Spain” that the government of the country would open up to the far right, as it has opened up, he recalled, the PP, in those autonomous communities and councils where it has had occasion.
In any case, to the alliance with Vox, Esteban added other reasons for the negative vote for the candidate condensed in the sense of the votes of the popular group in the previous legislature and in many aspects of the electoral program of the PP of July 23 . And he summarized: “If, as Mrs. Gamarra says, here you have to choose between Feijóo and amnesty, then listen, put things like this, amnesty.” Of course, Esteban was mentioned for a possible future understanding with Núñez Feijóo. He was quoted and reminded him that politics is a marathon, not a sprint, and that, although sometimes it is appropriate to sprint, those who sprint throughout the race are usually short-lived “as we have had occasion to see in this House”.
Núñez Feijóo grouped the responses to the Basque formations, as he had done on Tuesday with the Catalan groups – something that annoyed Esteban -, and answered Bildu by giving him the literal treatment of a terrorist group. The candidate considered it a matter of pride that the Abertzales did not vote for his investiture and remembered time and time again the victims of ETA. He also dedicated arrows when he addressed the PNB, ironic about his loss of votes to Bildu and accused them of having yielded to the strategies of the PSOE and Podemos for the benefit of the Abertzale left.
Feijóo’s answer brought Esteban back to the stand when he “thought of answering him from the seat”. The Jeltzale spokesman recalled, with regard to PNB’s support for the coalition government, the numerous occasions on which, during the previous legislature, the PP had voted in Congress with EH Bildu and ERC. But “as I told you and you have repeated, this is a marathon and we will continue to talk”. He added: “Today you have made more friends.” And he left.
