The president of the PNV, Andoni Ortuzar, spoke after the whirlwind of news over the weekend regarding the replacement of the candidate for lehendakari. Iñigo Urkullu will not run for a fourth term, and it will be Imanol Pradales who will replace him as head of the list, a decision that the Jeltzale leader has linked to the party's determination to favor a generational change within 12 years.
"We had challenges that needed people to remain in office for two or three terms and respond to a younger generational environment, but at the same time it could not be someone without experience. We wanted someone who knew how to move in the international arena and was multilingual. , and finally someone who had knowledge of institutional politics, party politics and also, in this case, the internal politics of the party itself," Ortuzar explained on Radio Euskadi.
In this sense, the president of the EBB, the Executive of the PNV, has recognized that his training suffers from "a deterioration of the brand", has specified that they have not decided to "do without Urkullu" and has indicated that they opted for Pradales after making a “robotic portrait” of what they need. “It's more of a succession than removing or adding whoever is there," she indicated.
Ortuzar has described Pradales as a “reliable” person, a profile that he considered ideal to address “a very intense political and socioeconomic agenda, processes that we can hopefully carry out in three terms.”
The leader of the Basque nationalists has refused to reveal whether or not Urkullu wanted to aspire to a fourth term, a point on which, in reality, there is little doubt: the current lehendakari was committed to continuing, although he left the decision in the hands of the party. .
Ortuzar, however, has acknowledged that the replacement, as a result of the leaks, has not gone as planned: "We planned to start the process on Monday, but we still had no intention of announcing the candidate, because there were still things to do." At this point , has left a surprising statement, pointing out that the decision for Pradales to be the candidate was made on the same Saturday.
Finally, the Jeltzale leader has thrown a dart at EH Bildu and has indicated that Arnaldo Otegi decided not to be a candidate as a consequence of the PNV's decision, an extreme that the general coordinator of the coalition flatly denied by pointing out that he had made the decision long ago. more than a year and that “he had been giving clues for months.”
"One of the first consequences of the PNV's decision has been that Otegi has fallen from the cartel. Their schedule was not planned in this way, they were waiting for ours and that is why they made the decision," he said.
