“It will be practically impossible for us to enter into any dialogue or negotiation on the budget for 2025 if we do not see clear progress, if we do not see effective compliance and a strong desire for the agreement to be fulfilled.” These were the words of the secretary general of ERC, Marta Rovira, this morning at the party’s national council. She raised the alarm following the statements of the spokesperson and minister of the Catalan Executive, Sílvia Paneque, who stated at the beginning of this week that before addressing financing, the Generalitat’s accounts for next year must be approved.
Esquerra is not only demanding that the PSC get to work so that Catalonia has a unique financing, but that it also does so with attitude. It has a card to force the machine: the Generalitat’s budget for 2025 for which the Government set this week a spending ceiling of 37,783 million euros. “If the agreement is not fulfilled, we will reach the end of the road,” said Rovira.
If the agreement is not fulfilled, we will reach the end of the road.”
The Government and ERC held an initial meeting to discuss the budgets. It was on Thursday and the Republicans had already warned that the dialogue was not starting well. Today Rovira reiterated that they will only be able to move forward in this matter to the extent that the fulfilment of the pact that involved the investiture of Illa in exchange for funding for Catalonia outside the common regime also advances. Rovira has assured that with the PSC and the investiture it was possible to move forward because the PSOE “began to fulfil many of the pending agreements”. “The same logic must be applied”, he stressed.
But there is one issue that Esquerra maintains is not agreed with the PSC, which has the Republicans on edge. Illa has kept 47 positions in Pere Aragonès’ Government. Most of them are secretaries or general directors. Some are civil servants or people who had already worked in previous governments. Some even have ERC membership cards. Rovira has again demanded that the latter leave their positions.
“The transfer (of the Government) implies that we ask our senior officials to leave. We want to make the country better from the opposition,” said Rovira before warning that next week the Esquerra leadership will meet to “review” which dismissals have been made and which are pending, and that the ERC leadership “will give its opinion when it has met in the national executive at the beginning of October.”
The Republican assures that the executive will meet to “review” which officials from the previous Government have left their posts and which have not.
In her speech, Rovira also referred to the crisis and the internal congress process that will lead to the appointment of a new leadership on November 30 and which so far has four pre-candidacies: Militància Decidim, Nova Esquerra Nacional, Foc Nou and Recuperem ERC, the latter promoted by Col•lectiu 1-O. For the party’s general secretary, “Esquerra must be rethought.” “In the face of the glaring failures that have been committed by the organization, it is worth rethinking ourselves a lot (…) thinking about the common project, not internal interests,” she said with respect to the parallel structure of ERC to discredit other political formations, responsible for the Alzheimer’s posters against Ernest and Pasqual Maragall.
At this point, Rovira has dared to describe the actions of his own party as “ethical and moral failures”. “We must finish clearing up responsibilities, until the end, and the ERC leadership, that of today, will contribute to clearing them up,” he stressed.
However, he has asked those present for “a great debate of ideas” so that the congress process is developed equally taking into account “the successes” of ERC “for decades” and has used a play on words with the names of those four pre-candidacies to encourage the militants to do so: “Perhaps it is necessary new fire for one new national left; the militancy we decide without ever losing sight of the collective spirit of the 1-O referendum.”
Source: www.lavanguardia.com
