15.01.2014 - 13:34
The motion in question was proposed by CiU and ERC as the first legal step toward a negotiated agreement with the Spanish Government with respect to holding a Catalan Referendum on independence and does nothing more than ask the Spanish Congress to transfer jurisdiction for holding referendums to the Catalan Government. The Catalan Socialist Party executive has directed its members to vote against the proposal. It is mostly a symbolic measure since the PP (who hold the majority of the seats in the Spanish Congress) and PSOE (PSC’s counterpart in Spain) have both promised to reject any such petition.
Indeed, the pro-independence CUP announced today that they would abstain from a vote on the proposal in the Catalan Parliament because they don’t want to subject Catalonia’s sovereignty to the Spanish Congress, and fear that the process could get tied up in that body which might actually complicate holding the referendum in November.
Mayor to give up seat
Àngel Ros, an MP for the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and mayor of Lleida will give up his seat in Parliament over differences with the party’s executive board with respect to tomorrow’s Parliament vote that petitions the Spanish Congress for the jurisdiction to convoke a referendum, according to reports by ‘La Vanguardia’ according to which Ros will officially announce his decision at 5:30pm this afternoon.
The First Secretary of the PSC, Pere Navarro, commented on Ros’ decision. ‘It’s an honorable gesture, since it puts collective interests above personal ones. He will keep being the Mayor of Lleida for years to come,’ declared Navarro as he was leaving a meeting today in Madrid with PSOE chairman Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. Navarro reminded the dissenting members of his party that last month’s National Council had already decided on PSC’s vote tomorrow, and that that vote would be ‘no’.
Division within PSC
The position taken against asking the Spanish Congress for the transfer of jurisdiction for convoking referendums has caused bad feeling among many members of the party’s executive board and the Parliamentary group. Not only are there the five members who disobeyed Navarro in the vote on the Declaration of Sovereignty, but there are also four additional members who are closer to the executive: Núria Parlón, Juli Fernàndez, Jaume Collboni and Xavier Sabaté, who would also like to abstain and who ask for discretion with their votes. These four, however, are not willing to break the party line, but they will make their differences public.
Decisive meeting of the dissenters
The ‘group of dissenters’ within the PSC, including Ros, Marina Geli, Joan Ignasi Elena, Núria Ventura and Rocío Martínez-Sampere, meets today to analyze the options it has open with respect to tomorrow’s vote in the parliament: a vote in favor, an abstention, giving up their seat, and a ‘critical’ no — that they could explain in a press conference later. Indeed, they may not necessarily all choose the same option.
Angel Ros, Lleida’s mayor, said that the dissenters will make ‘a decision either all together, or there may be different decisions, given each of our distinct personal circumstances’. ‘It would be sad,’ said Ros, that a resolution that will have only symbolic value, should end up provoking a problem within the PSC.’
Ros explained that after the Executive board meeting on Monday and the meeting of the Socialist Parliamentary group yesterday, that ‘no one has budged’. ‘The PSC Executive is clear: all members must vote against the proposal. And we defended abstention and those who defended allowing discretion have also stuck to their positions,’ he said.
Hierarchy prevails
Maurici Lucena, PSC’s parliamentary spokesperson, believes that ‘common sense will win out and it will respect the hierarchy’ when the members of the Socialist Parliamentary group have to vote on the petition to the Spanish Congress. Lucena reminded the dissenters yesterday that it is the hierarchy that ‘overrides personal opinions and favors a decision made collectively and democratically by the National Council’. On the other hand, today PSC’s first secretary, Pere Navarro, will go to Madrid to submit a non-binding proposal to demand the convocation of the bilateral commission of the Catalan and Spanish Governments, that ‘hasn’t met for two years’.
