Carles Puigdemont and Coalición Canaria focus attention on the negotiations for the constitution of the Congress Table and a hypothetical investiture; meanwhile, ERC has seen how its seven votes are taken for granted in the computation of the PSOE. The Socialists are interested in adding to the bloc on the right, while the Republicans reiterate over and over again that their support is not guaranteed, not even for the vote on Thursday.
With the pro-independence common front ruled out, Junts and ERC have parallel negotiation channels open for the vote that will make up the governing body of Congress and, while the post-convergents remain silent, Marta Rovira explained yesterday some of the political conditions that ERC has set on the table of the PSOE.
The ERC general secretary recalled that her seven votes will not go to "a table in Congress that has vetoed Catalan, that has not allowed an investigation into Pegasus espionage or that has stalled the processing of the amnesty law." During the last legislature it was the PSOE who, from the Congress Table, facilitated the blocking of these initiatives. Now, the Republicans have communicated that the negotiation for the Table must include political questions and not only logistics. They did so at the meeting last week between Teresa Jordà and the acting Secretary of State for Relations with the Courts, Rafael Simancas, and she was elevated to the socialist negotiating team.
The PSOE intends to refer the political demands to a subsequent negotiation on the investiture and its strategy involves limiting the current contacts to issues of parliamentary logistics: Congress Table, parliamentary groups, positions in the commissions... But ERC needs to add some profit, even if it is partial to shore up its dialogue strategy in the face of the silence that Junts maintains. The negotiation of the Table is the prelude to the investiture and in ERC they maintain that, even so or, precisely because of this, they must include a political component.
Despite everything, the public message conveyed after the meeting by Jordà, spokesman for the ERC negotiating teams, represented progress, in the opinion of the Socialists, pending the position of the PNV, CC and, above all, Junts.
Both the ERC and Puigdemont's party anticipate three dizzying days – “an eternity”, they say – to establish a position and determine if the PSOE-Sumar bloc can take control of the Congress Table, where the Canary Islands Coalition also wants to cast its vote and proposes a presidency for a Basque nationalist, as the president of the Canary Islands government, Fernando Clavijo, explained yesterday in La Vanguardia.
The contacts to add support for the re-election of Pedro Sánchez have not started and the ERC story is already a victim of the polarization fueled by the PSOE and Junts, with Puigdemont designated as the holder of the key to the legislature. The silence of the post-convergents includes the will not to publicly exhibit that key, but it has become clear that there will be no common pro-independence front and that Junts will maintain its own strategy.
Rovira assured yesterday that ERC prioritizes the "strategic understanding" with Junts. “We do not want to give up the joint and necessary force of the 14 pro-independence deputies. We think 14, strategically coordinated, weighs more than 7 per side,” she wrote on Twitter. Junts sees this common front as unfeasible, alleging, in the first instance, a lack of trust. The post-convergents want to take the opportunity to put an end to what they consider ERC “unilateralism” after a legislature in which the Republicans exhibited their 13 deputies compared to the 4 of Junts.
