Junqueras launches his candidacy to lead ERC and defends putting an end to “parallel bodies”

The former president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, presented his candidacy to lead the party again at the congress on November 30, and defended putting an end to the internal “parallel bodies” that, in his words, have led them to the current situation. The presentation was made at the La Passió theatre in Olesa de Montserrat (Barcelona), a space with a capacity for about 1,500 people, from where he criticised the “B structure” organised within the party and which promoted controversial communication campaigns, such as the posters against the Maragalls. The ‘Militància Decidim’ candidacy is one of the four that are competing for the leadership of ERC: the others are one close to the current general secretary, Marta Rovira, and two others are lists critical of the party’s strategy of pacts in recent years. Junqueras has stated that he has the support of 60% of ERC mayors, and has placed the leader of the Republicans in the Barcelona City Council, Elisenda Alamany, as a figure to occupy the general secretary of the party after the congress. “STRUCTURE B” Regarding the ‘structure B’, Junqueras has condemned that in 2018 some members of the party allegedly organised a group in the Signal messaging application to make decisions outside the presidency that he himself occupied and outside the executive and the ERC Council, the two main governing bodies. He has said verbatim that the ‘structure B’ was dedicated to putting up posters against Alzheimer’s, going against militants, or putting up posters with messages such as ‘Rot in jail’. “Those people who did that betrayed our principles,” he criticised, and he added verbatim that there were people who claimed parallel actions from the ERC press room while, in his opinion, they were embarrassing the Republican militants. TURN IT INTO A “DRIVER OF CHANGE” He reiterated that many members are outraged by the actions of the ‘structure B’, but he has defended “turning it into a driver of change” to renew the party’s leadership. He has also asked members to commit to “never stitching up any wound” that they have not previously cleaned: “No one has the right to ask that what shames us has not happened.” Regarding the internal functioning of the party, Junqueras has proposed giving more weight to the municipalities and “empowering the membership.” OTHERS HAVE “NEVER” PUT UP POSTERS “We will not let ourselves be taught by those who have never gone to put up posters and take them down,” he assured, and he thanked the members who have been members of the party for decades and have had to lift the project on other occasions. With this, he has underlined the need to “dignify” the Consell and the Executive of ERC, and has said that his candidacy wants to be a “guarantee of cleanliness” and of the will to stitch together the militancy and the organisation. THEY SEARCHED ERC MINISTRY OFFICES, NOT THE PALAU At the end of his speech, Junqueras has reaffirmed the objective of the independence of Catalonia with new majorities and has defended that independence, textually, is not only won in votes, but that it must be “proclaimed and defended with the exercise of all democratic rights”. He has also expressed that, in his words, the people of ERC were the ones who promoted the 1-O, and he has given as an example that the Civil Guard went to search the ERC ministries on 20 September 2017 and not the Palau de la Generalitat or the Ministry of the Presidency. OTHER SPEECHES AND ATTENDEES The event was also attended by the former regional minister Raül Romeva; the MEP Diana Riba; the senator Laura Castel; the councillor in Olot (Girona) Laila El Gamouchi; the mayor of Sant Julià de Ramis, Marc Puigtió, and the former regional minister Bernat Solé, among others. Also in the audience were the spokesperson for ERC in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, and the former regional minister for the Interior of the Generalitat, Joan Ignasi Elena, among others. The attendees shouted slogans in favour of the independence of Catalonia or others such as ‘Oriol president’, with pro-independence flags from the audience.

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Source: Newsroom Infobae from Infobae.com on 2024-09-22 01:35:07