The Council of the Republic elects Jordi Domingo as president and turns its back on Comín

BarcelonaJordi Domingo is the new president of the Council of the Republic. With a turnout of only 9% of the almost 90,000 registered in the Consell, the candidate of the managing board has uncontestedly imposed himself on the other three rivals in the electoral race with 65.8% support (5,340 votes). In second place was Montserrat Duran, who was the voice of the less pro-government local councils, with 22.7% support (1,846 votes), and in third place, the former vice president of the Consell and MEP of Junts, Toni Comín, who was not even able to reach 10% of the votes (745). In fourth place was Antoni Walter Castelló, who came close to 2% of the votes thanks to the 161 votes obtained, although he was the only one of the four who had no chance of winning because he was running without a team or support with the sole objective of claiming the Països Catalans.

Domingo's victory means turning the page on the most turbulent period of the Consell, which was dissolved into a management committee a few months ago and called elections in the face of the various scandals in the management of the economic resources that Comín had made as vice president of the entity. The lawyer and former consul of the sea is betting on making a new fire to start a new stage in the Consell, which puts an end to the internal chaos that it has suffered in recent months, while making it more transversal.

Comín is still the big loser of the elections. He started as the favorite and was relegated to third place, with more than disappointing results. Even Montserrat Duran has surpassed him, having managed to connect with a significant part of the local councils thanks to the grassroots work that she and her team have done since the Consell was created. Both candidates denounced irregularities during the electoral process and demanded an audit to clarify the facts, despite recognizing Domingo's victory.

Comín, on the other hand, has found the campaign very long. After being accused of irregularities for payments that he passed off as Consell expenses at the beginning of the campaign, the former rapper Valtónic, with whom he shared exile and who was responsible for IT donations to the Consell, accused him of having transferred money to his account. And in the middle of the campaign, a former Junts advisor denounced him in the European Parliamentfor sexual and psychological harassment. Despite defending the legitimacy of his candidacy as an exile, Comín did not have the support of his predecessor, Carles Puigdemont, who demanded that hewill withdraw from the race, upset by his controversial management of the Council. Nor that of the former councillor Lluís Puig, who announced his support for Jordi Domingo's candidacy.

Recovering the credibility of the entity

The brand new president of the Consell has already announced what the first actions he will carry out will be. To begin with, he wants to talk to the other candidates to try to incorporate the points of their programs that he finds interesting and call the territorial assembly to listen to all the local councils. However, he is clear that the essential thing is, for now, to restore the confidence of the Consell by implementing "effective transparency mechanisms in political and economic management" to recover the credibility of the entity.

But his great objective is to achieve what until now has been a pipe dream: that the Consell be the common home of the independence movement. Without any link to Junts, as was the case with Puigdemont himself or Comín if he achieved victory, Domingo will fight to integrate all the sensibilities of the independence movement, promoting unity and collaboration between the different spaces to advance towards independence.

"The unity of civil society is fundamental and should not depend on the dynamics and interests of the parties," this campaign has made clear on more than one occasion. All of this to reconvert the Council of the Republic into "the axis of coordination of the independence movement both nationally and internationally," which is capable of drawing up a shared strategy, at a time of maximum division of the movement.