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Vicent Partal

11.06.2014

Navarro doesn't matter, the PSC does

The resignation of Pere Navarro is good news for the country but it might be even better news for Catalan socialists. Now they have a chance, just one, to try to return to what they were, what they used to be, and connect once again with the Catalan people. To do so, it won't be enough to usher in new faces, but certainly without the new faces, change would have been impossible, especially in the case of Pere Navarro.


In my editorial on May 15, about the "Terrassa woman" I wrote, "He can stick to his story but I'm sure that the PSC will take proper measures at the appropriate time." Navarro's crass manipulation of the non-incident was the last straw that woke up his fellow party members. Nobody backed him up in public and even Collboni, a name that should be kept in mind from here on out, openly rejected Navarro's statement.


Everyone knew that Navarro's days were numbered, especially when he led PSC to its worst results in its history in the EU elections. The pressure on mayors and councilors, frightened by ERC's and even CiU's showing in traditionally socialist cities, tightened the noose. But there's more.


Navarro tried to get through the enormous crisis that he himself had unleashed by sidelining the so-called "dissident" deputies regarding the right to decide. Without realizing that after May 25, they have only gained in strength. To the point in which they could threaten him to demand an emergency congress that in the end will be held and that we hope helps bring PSC back to its roots.


Down in the bunker, Navarro tried to hold on, disregarding the resignations of [Spanish Socialist] Rubalcaba and [Basque Socialist] Patxi López. But finally the PSC took the necessary measures in order to avoid, or try to avoid, its own fall into the depths. Now it's up to them. Up to the emergency congress. It will depend on whether they are able to come back to the place where they'll find all the other parties with democratic traditions and align themselves in favor of the November 9th referendum and the right to decide. Navarro is not important in this respect—he will be reduced to a sad, crazed parenthesis. Now what matters, and matters a lot to all of us, is the PSC.


The unionist press can't stop dreaming up a crisis in sovereignty circles. But the crisis, is clearly on the other side: Cañas, Rubalcaba, Navarro, Duran, Juan Carlos. Wow. Just wow.






*[in which Navarro claimed to have been punched by a 50-year old woman and chalked it up to sovereign tension, despite the fact that the woman could not be found, there was no evidence at the time she was pro-independence, and indeed it was later found out that she had been a member of a pro-Franco and thus very unionist party].


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