Crossroads of reproaches between Mas and Duran for calling the 2012 elections

The former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas and the former leader of the Democratic Union Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida have maintained a crossroads of reproaches in different media for the call for early elections in 2012, with which CiU made a turn towards self-determination, which ultimately ended the federation.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
09 November 2022 Wednesday 04:32
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Crossroads of reproaches between Mas and Duran for calling the 2012 elections

The former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas and the former leader of the Democratic Union Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida have maintained a crossroads of reproaches in different media for the call for early elections in 2012, with which CiU made a turn towards self-determination, which ultimately ended the federation.

Mas has revealed that the Christian Democrat "encouraged" him to call the elections, after the failure of the fiscal pact, after Duran assured, also this morning, that the change in strategy was due to a desire to "continue in power". The former leader of Convergència, who has denied the majority, considers that in 2012 the absence of a "route" to improve the autonomy of Catalonia was confirmed.

In September of that year, after Artur Mas did not obtain the fiscal pact -after an unsuccessful meeting in Moncloa with the then Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy- and the pro-independence demonstration on September 11, the head of the Government advanced the elections . It was at this time that self-determination and self-state began to be talked about openly. It is this change of course, with which it ended up reaching 2015 and the Junts pel Sí candidacy, which Duran has described as being to "not lose power", in statements to La2 and Ràdio 4. The Christian Democrat recalled that some leaders of that time "had never been independentists."

For Mas, reducing it to a question of power "does not honor the truth", at the same time that he explained that he sought advice from some CiU leaders, including Duran i Lleida, and that this was one of the first with who spoke and encouraged him to anticipate the elections. In this sense, in statements to TV3, he has recalled "the consequences of the complicated terrain where we got into", with which it is confirmed that "talking about a smoke screen is absurd".

In this way, it has also addressed those who accused Convergència of wanting to cover up corruption with the national issue. "We would have saved ourselves a lot of problems," Mas said, referring to the different media scandals and police and judicial operations derived from the 9-N consultation of 2014 and the procés. On this issue, he has denounced the preparation of "false dossiers of the Ministry of the Interior in collusion with the media and judges to sink electoral expectations of certain political options."

Precisely, on corruption and the 3% case, Mas has pointed out that justice "has not yet shown that public adjudications were altered." In fact, the former president of the Generalitat has assured that it is "almost impossible" to change the way of bidding since in the contracting tables "there are, fundamentally, technicians who decide according to technical criteria". Thus, he believes that party treasurers "do not have the ability to alter the allocations." On the other hand, he has recalled that at that time "it was legal" to receive donations from companies through party foundations.

Although Mas was secretary general, first, and president, later, of the CDC during the years covered by the 3% case, there is no evidence to incriminate the former president. Asked if it is possible that a party leader did not know what was happening in such a case, Duran i Lleida has opted for an enigmatic answer with which he has refused to defend Mas: "If I were in front of a judge I would have to say the true, now I better shut up and that's it”.

Duran's reproaches have not stopped here. According to the former CiU leader in Congress, Mas did not notify him that he had met with the Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez, in Moncloa to negotiate the Statute in 2006. “I made it easy for him to tell me, no It was necessary for him to invite me”, said Duran, who has recognized that this fact made him “angry”.