Josep Costa also leaves the leadership of the ANC

BarcelonaAnother departure from the leadership of the ANC. And not just any departure. The man who was the second most voted candidate by members after Lluís Llach is also leaving the ship. The former vice-president of the Parliament, Josep Costa, has ceased to be the national secretary of the organization. most members of the critical sector have already done so after the approval of the reform of the statutes that reduces the majorities when making decisions. In a letter signed with other secretaries who have already resigned, and which ARA has had access to, Costa does not mince his words when criticizing the management headed by Lluís Llach and disassociates himself from the entity. Costa, who had called for a vote against the reform of the statutes that was approved by the partners in an incontestable manner, had already had several clashes in recent weeks with Llach's standing committee, the Assembly's reduced governing body.

Costa recalls that at the start of the mandate, the secretariat approved a resolution, without the support of the leadership, in which it advocated a unilateral approach and denounced the pro-independence pacts with the parties that supported the application of Article 155, referring to the PSOE. "Not only has it failed to achieve any of the approved objectives, but it has imposed different objectives," Costa and the other resigning secretaries complain.

The other criticism from the leadership is its "complicity with the parties and institutional actors" that "takes every opportunity to show off its good relations with them." "We've gone from a strong ANC to one where the president of the Generalitat tried unsuccessfully to boycott demonstrations," referring to the time when Pere Aragonès was president and clashed with the then leader of the entity, Dolors Feliu, for example, to "an ANC that no longer causes discomfort." For this reason, they conclude that the Assembly has been "absorbed by the political establishment that just a year ago we intended to combat" and that "it is no longer a useful instrument for working for independence."

Internally, Costa is highly critical of the fact that the leadership has silenced the critical sector without having any desire to integrate it. The former Junts deputy declined to run for president or vice president, nor did he decline to run for president or vice president when the vote had to be repeated due to disagreement between the outgoing leadership and the reformers to elect the entity's top leaders. But he later decided to run for the position on the Strategy and Discourse Committee and was defeated by the ruling party candidate, Josep Pinyol, by just five votes. Costa's support for Josep Punga in the race against Lluís Llach for the ANC presidency, and then his blank vote, like the rest of the outgoing board members, led to his removal from the leadership.

Steering control

"We have witnessed with surprise a toxic dynamic, spearheaded by those we expected to be the president of all, who instead of trying to overcome internal debates that divided us, have fostered and exploited them," the letter states. "And not only that, the resignations of valuable people for any entity have been celebrated or incentivized in an incomprehensible way," they add, referring to the fact that members of the standing committee, such as Treasurer Jaume Valls himself, had anticipated on social media that this sector would fold its sails.

In this sense, Costa and the other secretaries who have stepped aside regret that the leadership has done nothing to "reverse the dynamic of division and demobilization that already incapacitates it." de facto to lead the independence movement." "The essence and spirit of the entity have been sacrificed due to the urgency of controlling it and subjecting it to the designs of groups outside the grassroots assemblies," they emphasize in the letter. Before these resignations, the permanent committee was already entirely controlled by the sector's initial position in order to occupy all management positions to avoid divergences. "All or nothing," members of this sector declared on the eve of the secretariat elections. Beyond the four organic positions that were elected last year withLlach as president and Noemí Zafra as vice presidentThe other nine coordinators are secretaries who opposed the civic list and were from the ruling party. Now without Costa, the organization's leadership is left without one of the organization's most critical voices, leaving only Uriel Bertran, Dolors Feliu's right-hand man during the previous term and a staunch advocate of running for Parliament from the ANC.