The debate on the investiture has fallen by its own weight in Esquerra, despite the fact that just after the Catalan elections of May 12 he had chanted leave us alone, that we must first resolve our internal mess in full measure. The calendar dictates, but so does necessity: the last day for the constitutive session of the Parliament to be held is June 10; the first debate to elect the president of the Generalitat must be on June 25 at the latest. And ERC’s political future is more or less at stake with the investiture of Salvador Illa or – with less probability – that of Carles Puigdemont, or that of no one.
Esquerra has ridden for four days through the scene of emotions characteristic of just after an election. Faced with the drop in the results – from 33 to 20 deputies – and during the election night and also the next day, Pere Aragonès himself refused to establish talks with the PSC or Junts to appoint a president of the Generalitat. “We are not here to facilitate an investiture of the PSC and neither will we participate in operations that require the agreement of Junts and the PSC”, said the head of the Government.
On the fifth day is when the leadership of ERC, after the drip of future resignations of its leaders, has landed to admit that it will have to address the investiture debate before that of the process of straightening out the party itself. Thus, Friday was when the executive of the republican formation met again, more calmly than on previous occasions, to designate its general secretary, Marta Rovira, as coordinator of the negotiations for the constitution of the Bureau of the Parliament and of the subsequent ones on the investiture. Equally, the militancy will have to decide on the possible agreements that the leadership can reach for the election of a president of the Generalitat.
It is clear that the constitution of the Parliament is ahead in the calendar, but the scenario that the PSC favors the presidency of the ERC is rejected for now by both parties, because the letters of a pact to invest Salvador Illa would soon be discovered then, and Esquerra, regarding the investiture, also needs time to say both yes and no.
The national congress of the party to be reborn is not until November 30. “There are more than six months left, that’s enough time”, they say at the training. So the first special category mountain stage is the investiture.
In ERC there is division on this point. There are those in the management who are convinced that supporting Illa would be a practically fatal blow. But as the days pass, the feeling grows that a repeat election would be suicide, according to the party. The PSC and Junts are on the rise, while Esquerra would not even have a candidate with a face and eyes.
The option of voting in favor of the PSC candidate is seen by some sectors as the most favorable of the undesirable ones. Voting in favor in exchange for “a high price” – maintaining the Rodalies transfer plan, agreeing to negotiate funding, free early childhood education, etc. – and then moving to the opposition is a possibility that Joan Tardà, ex-deputy of ERC, has raised publicly.
Investing in Puigdemont is much more complicated, “not to say arithmetically impossible”, they point out to Esquerra. In any case, in the formation there is the conviction that with Junts there are many issues for which accounts should be passed, starting with when he left the Government in October 2022 and continuing with the times they consider that the post-convergents they have joined hands with the socialists in Parliament to erode ERC.
Republicans will have to decide. Rovira takes on the challenge of coordinating the negotiations, but will leave the party once new leadership is in place on November 30. The fact that neither she nor Aragonès will be there beyond that date encourages the idea that future commanders will not be held accountable for the decision, no matter how much it has been endorsed by the militancy. Not even Oriol Junqueras, who will resign from his position right after the elections on June 9 to present himself for re-election to continue leading the party.
ERC has a bad piece on the loom and it can precisely be affected because of all the internal fighting in these elections. At the moment, however, the polls keep the three deputies they already got with the alliance with EH Bildu and the BNG. And it will not be until after this new call to the polls that Esquerra will not take the negotiations for the investiture seriously.
