Aragonès hastens JxCat to reach an agreement "as soon as possible"

Eleven days after losing the second vote of the investiture debate, the ERC candidate, Pere Aragonès, has broken his silence to hasten JxCat to reach an understanding in the coming days to be able to be chosen president and start the legislature. "The country has many urgencies that with this interim situation cannot be addressed, and you have to close an agreement as soon as possible to form a government", said the still vice president and acting president.

Nearly two months after the elections, Aragonès has claimed not to delay the agreement. "We cannot allow further delays", reiterated the presidential candidate, who did not want to venture to set a date for his investiture. "Setting immovable dates is not good advice, but we need an agreement as soon as possible to deal with the urgencies and move forward in the independence process", he said, before declaring: "If it is the 12th, better than the 14th or the 16th". After the failed investiture, there had been speculation that the agreement would be reached by Sant Jordi (April 23), but sources from the Republicans and JxCat doubt that at the current pace all the pending files will be closed in two weeks, and see it as more feasible to close the negotiations at the end of April or the beginning of May.

The demand of Aragonès arrives the day after the Republicans announced that they will support the JxCat MP Aurora Madaula to replace Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas in the second secretariat of the Parliamentary bureau, although on Wednesday they linked their support to a "global agreement" of investiture of Pere Aragonès. Yesterday, however, ERC nuanced its positioning and chose to validate the relief in the bureau without conditioning it to the investiture of the candidate of Esquerra.

After meeting this morning with the negotiating team of his party, Aragonès has clung to the pre-agreement signed with the CUP to urge JxCat to reach an agreement. "If the understanding with the CUP has been possible thanks to negotiation, this also has to be possible now with JxCat", he said before remarking that the commitments to which they have arrived with the cupaires are "perfectly acceptable" for JxCat. In any case, he remarked that this pre-agreement can be "expanded and complemented", after highlighting that many of the programmatic agreements have been validated by the three forces during this legislature.

Aragonès, who did not want to detail the stumbling blocks that separate them from JxCat, has refused an executive that is not pro-independence with the external support of the PSC. "Our priority is a Government where JxCat also participates", he stressed, despite the fact that some leaders of the formation of Carles Puigdemont have positioned themselves in favour of facilitating the investiture but remain in the opposition after the failure of the second vote.

The ERC candidate has been confident about reaching an understanding with its governmental partner. "We continue working to reach an agreement and there is a clear will to make it possible", he said, without overlooking the result of the polls, which have given independence a comfortable majority of 74 seats. "There is a clear mandate from the voters to reach major agreements with this pro-independence majority", he said.

The CUP doubts JxCat's "willingness to negotiate"

The deputy of the CUP-NCG Laia Estrada has questioned the will "to negotiate" of JxCat in the face of a possible investiture of the candidate of ERC, Pere Aragonès. In an interview with ACN, Estrada has regretted that the formation of Carles Puigdemont has not yet sent them their proposal for the Government a month after they asked for it. "The problem is that we cannot oppose proposals because due to an unknown reason there is no willingness to enter into negotiations and dialogue", the MP mentioned. Estrada explained that while the cupaires and ERC have already presented their respective proposals for a country model, and have explained how the political conflict should be addressed, JxCat has not yet detailed theirs. "We can be wrong, but what we cannot do is to oppose it to the strategy of Junts because we do not know what it is", she said. She insisted that, for example, in national terms they do not share ERC's strategy but that, at the very least, they know it.