“It is completely ruled out.” It is the response of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, about the possibility of the PSC supporting the investiture of the Junts candidate, Carles Puigdemont. In an interview on Al Rojo Vivo, on Sexta, the socialist leader asked the former president of the Generalitat to accept reality. “There is no pro-independence majority,” he said to defend a Catalan executive headed by Salvador Illa.
“Puigdemont has to accept reality. There is no pro-independence majority in Parliament. All roads lead to the same protagonist, the winner of the elections, Salvador Illa,” he said in the interview in which he considered that the Junts leader can do like Feijóo and “consider himself the illegitimate president”, but, he specified, “the numbers are what they are.”
The President of the Government has thus closed the door to Puigdemont, who after the result of the Catalan elections announced that he would run for the investiture to lead the new government. Without a possible pro-independence majority after 12M, this investiture can only go ahead thanks to the vote of the socialists.
Sánchez, therefore, has asked all parties for “responsibility.” “What Catalan society would not accept is a repeat election. It would be imperative to appeal to the responsibilities of the parties so that there is a new government led by Illa,” he defended. In this sense and when asked by Esquerra Republicana, he considered that all parties “have their internal processes” and asked for time: “Democracy has its moments.”
He has also addressed the Popular Party, when talking about the possible support that Illa could have when he runs for that investiture. “I find it striking that the PP has not undertaken a reflection on what it is going to do at Illa’s investiture. If it were the other way around, I would be constantly asking questions,” he reflected. And then he asked himself “where Mr. Feijóo has taken him to copy the speech of the extreme right”: “Nowhere, because Vox is still there. The strategy of blending in with the extreme right is one of the serious risks of Spanish and European democracy.”
The socialist leader has ended the process. “Catalan society has said ‘it’s over’, that a new era must be opened,” said the head of the Executive, who has opted for this new stage to be governed by “coexistence, the will to agree and the management of public services”. Thus, he has defended the policy that his executive has followed in recent years, first with the pardons for the imprisoned independence leaders and then with the processing of the amnesty law that Congress is expected to approve on May 30.
“I have had doubts just as I had doubts with the pardons. Those doubts are legitimate. Probably many viewers who perhaps voted for the PSOE or the PSC today better understand the bet we made with very risky decisions. The result was not so obvious,” Sánchez acknowledged in the interview. “There is a fact [de las elecciones catalanas] that has caught my attention. 4 out of 5 have voted for political options for the normalization and stability of Catalan politics,” he later noted.
Source: www.eldiario.es
