The former president of Unidas Podemos in Congress Jaume Asens, in charge of Sumar's negotiating contacts with the independentistas, has confessed that after the demands that Carles Puigdemont put on the table yesterday to open a negotiation for the investiture, he sees the figure of the rapporteur that the expresident requests, and pleads for a "facilitator" who would do that medication work and be "neutral and friendly."
"When talking about a rapporteur, that seems to me to be typical of armed conflicts or peace processes. I think there are other formulas," Asens asserted, predicting that this figure would "extend a lot" a process of negotiation that is "between parties" and not "between one government and another government".
Asens has also said that the amnesty law that the Junts leader is demanding is the "payment" for that formation to support the investiture and not the party's precondition for negotiating it.
"They are not the preconditions, they are the conditions for the investiture", Asens defended in an interview on Onda Cero, where he stressed that the "center of the agreement" goes through the amnesty law and that the rest of the requests are "ornament".
He has urged "starting from a premise" whereby, in a negotiation, one starts from "a position of maximums" that is "easing" and that the requests are "softening" or "qualifying". In this sense, he has stated that he sees a "will" on the part of the former Catalan president to bring positions closer to the negotiation, since if he did not want to do so he would have demanded a referendum and the talks could not continue. "I think that the demands that he put on the table show that there is a will to dialogue," he added.
Speaking to TV3, Asens has called on JxCat not to waste the "historic opportunity" that the negotiation represents. The most notable thing about his speech is that there is a party," said Asens, who considers that Puigdemont's conditions establish a "playing field" and "the same negotiation framework" to start talking. According to Asens, it is a "moment history" in which you have to be "very brave" and be willing to take risks to achieve "success".
Reaching an agreement, he pointed out, always implies "a certain ability to make one's positions more flexible", although it is sometimes difficult "to explain to people who do not want to give up anything that all negotiations imply to some extent giving up positions". "We have a historic opportunity that we cannot miss," Asens stressed, convinced that everyone is "aware of what is at stake" and that if this opportunity is lost "we will return to the status quo, paralysis and frustration".
Asens, who has acknowledged that he has spent the summer reading amnesty legal texts - such as those from Portugal or Italy - has said that Puigdemont is in a "transcendental moment", in which he will have to decide whether to take advantage of this " opportunity" that is presented to him, with a Government of PSOE and Sumar that is "willing to dialogue" to resolve the Catalan conflict.
Last term, Asens recalled, in Junts there was already "a will" to explore agreements with the PSOE and Unidas Podemos, but it was the socialists who turned their backs on Puigdemont. "The PSOE ruled out reaching any agreement with Junts at the beginning of the last legislature," remarked Asens, who pointed out that the socialists "have said many things and then changed them."
Asens is "concerned" that this change of position in the socialist ranks is "out of opportunism and not out of conviction", because that "could feed the discourse of the extreme right" that in reality they are reluctantly accepting "blackmail" from JxCat, although the PP has already "legitimized" Junts by wanting to open a dialogue. In this sense, he has lamented the "difficulty of the PSOE to accept" that Spain cannot be governed without the "recognition of the plurinationality of the State".
