The forces of the Government, PSOE and Unidas Podemos, but also their parliamentary partners such as the PNV and ERC have valued this Tuesday the decision of the EH Bildu candidates who served their sentence for crimes of non-violence take possession of their posts if they are elected. EH Bildu, who has said that the decision has corresponded to the members of the lists, has accused the extreme right of a campaign of “harassment and demolition” through this matter.
After several days in which the debates of the campaign for the regional and municipal elections on May 28 have revolved almost exclusively around ETA, dissolved more than five years ago, the seven EH Bildu candidates who were members of the terrorist gang and who committed blood crimes have published a letter in which they clarify that they will not collect the record in the event of being elected after the municipal and regional elections in Euskadi and Navarra.
“Our cases concrete ones have been more highlighted by the facts for which we were sentenced. We are not going to deny now our militancy of the past nor the responsibility that we assume with it. The configuration of the lists in our respective municipalities has reached an undoubted importance, which forces us, for different reasons, to withdraw our candidacies to the extent possible and to ensure that in no case will we take the position of councilor ”, reads the text sent in the this Tuesday morning.
According to Covite, an association of victims led by Consuelo Ordóñez, there were a total of 44 express prisoners on the EH Bildu lists for these elections, but the same note regrets that people included in the list have been put in the same bag in summaries under the prism of “everything is ETA” and unrelated to terrorism, as the PP spokeswoman, Cuca Gamarra, did last Wednesday in Congress. “You buy your partners at any price to stay in Moncloa. He pays Bildu, who appears with 44 terrorists on his electoral lists. This is the electoral poster with which the PSOE is presented, these are its partners for next May 28, ”he told Pedro Sánchez in the control session with the Government.
Now, after the decision of the seven express, both the government parties and their partners have expressed their satisfaction with the news, although all with different nuances. The Government, which in the mouth of its president had already come to describe the inclusion of ex-terrorists on the EH Bildu lists as “legal, but not decent”, has celebrated the decision and has raised its tone both against the Basque independence party and against the People’s Party. This should never have happened”, said the minister spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez, during question time at the Council of Ministers press conference.
In the minister’s opinion, EH Bildu’s initial decision to incorporate candidates with blood crimes behind them “demonstrates that this political formation still has many steps to take.” And he has taken the opportunity to send a message to Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who in recent days has held the Executive directly responsible for the situation denounced by the victims of terrorism. “What has become clear again is that, among those who have not taken into account the pain of the victims and those who try to continue using it twelve years later, we are an immense majority of Spaniards. Those who have won today are the victims”, he said.
The Government has not wanted to confirm or deny that from the environment of the Executive or the PSOE the deep discomfort generated by the preparation of the candidacies has been transferred directly to EH Bildu to try to get them to back down. “Political parties make their own decisions on their lists,” they simply explain. Isabel Rodríguez has insisted that, in her opinion, the important thing is to remember “that democracy defeated ETA twelve years ago” and that “what the Government will never do is instrumentalize the pain of the victims”.
United Podemos has also celebrated the decision, although with a different tone. “The citizens of Euskadi and Navarra have been following the difficult path of building peace for a long time. EH Bildu’s decision is an important step that contrasts with a right wing capable of using the memory of the victims for electoral purposes”, said the Minister of Social Rights and Secretary General of Podemos, Ione Belarra, in a message on social networks. her.
Asked at a press conference in Congress about this matter, the parliamentary spokesman for Unidas Podemos, Pablo Echenique, has also accused the right of exercising a “tactic” on this issue. “Basque and Navarrese society is ahead of this issue.It has been on the path of peace for many years and we are modestly accompanying that path. I am not going to tell other parties what they have to do ”, he said regarding the question of whether the party of the Abertzale left should extend the decision to the rest of the prisoners.
For his part, the PSOE spokesman in Congress, Patxi López, has indicated in the corridors of the Congress of Deputies that the inclusion of former ETA members on the lists could be legal but that it was not decent and that added pain to the victims.
The socialist also thanked the association of victims of ETA Covite for their work, compared to others who, as always, have only used the ghost of ETA to attack the PSOE, has indicated in the corridors of Congress. The PP, as always, returns to using terrorism as it has no proposals, he added in a message on his Twitter account.
Meanwhile, during the morning the general secretary of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, appeared , which has ruled out this scenario and has attributed the withdrawal of the expresses to a personal decision made directly by those people. “Our almost 4,500 candidates, all of them with their civil and political rights in force, subscribe to EH Bildu’s commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic paths,” he said at a press conference in which he accused the extreme right. of a “campaign of harassment and demolition”. Otegi has applauded the decision of the seven candidates, which he has described as an “unequivocal gesture” for the construction of democratic coexistence
Both the Republican Left and the Basque Nationalist Party have also applauded the decision. In the case of the Republicans, their spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, has considered that it is a good day “for democracy, freedom, for coexistence and peace” and, on the contrary, “a bad day for haters professionals”. Rufián then argued that if they had to remove people with “similar crimes” in the PP, Vox or the Civil Guard from lists or positions of responsibility, “they would stay in the picture.” “In this country, the right should stop talking about ETA to start talking about Spain, the Spanish people, their project. Because ETA doesn’t exist and there are people who don’t like it, but it doesn’t exist. I would like the right and the extreme right to talk about something else”, he said.
The PNV spokesman, Aitor Esteban, for his part, applauded the gesture but considered that it was due more to a “ electoral calculation” than to an “ethical reflection”. “I think it is positive, above all because it relieves the victims. It has to be a reason of satisfaction for them. What I have left is a doubt, doing it at this moment having been a calculated and taken decision, doing it at this moment responds to an electoral calculation more than to an ethical reflection ”, he said at the press conference prior to the Board of Spokespersons .
The PP has tried to mark the resignation of the seven candidates as a victory of its own. The right-wing leader has assured on his Twitter account that democracy, dignity and decency for the majority of Spaniards have prevailed despite Pedro Sánchez, who chose to leave the Spaniards alone. We have taken the first step. Let’s go for the following ones, he has concluded
Feijóo has insisted on this idea later. In an appearance before the media without questions, he has stated that the PP has been asking for the disappearance of the Bildu candidates indicated for dignity, and that they have demanded that Sánchez use the Lawyers and the Attorney General’s Office to force Bildu to make the former candidates disappear. from the Basque coalition who were sentenced for their links to ETA.
The head of the opposition has maintained that the decision of the seven candidates who have announced their willingness to resign not because Sánchez asked them to, because they did not dares. Let’s hope that they renounce the minutes in writing and it is not another deception, he added. The Government has lost and the Spanish have won. Sánchez has lost and democracy has won, he has concluded
