17.09.2014 - 13:52
A group of political parties which together hold the majority of the seats in the Catalan Parliament, the governing CiU, together with ERC, ICV-EUiA and CUP, have agreed on a proposed joint resolution expressing the commitment to hold a referendum on independence from Spain on 9 November with ‘all possible democratic guarantees’. This idea has brought together the same four political parties that less than a year ago agreed on the date for the vote and the wording of the question to be put to the people. The proposed resolution urges the president of the Catalan government, Artur Mas, to call a referendum ‘in accordance with the existing legal framework’, without going into greater detail about said framework. The proposed resolution, which will be passed today during the General Policy Debate session in the Catalan Parliament, also urges for Parliament to be consulted ‘when the circumstances of the democratic process to decide the political future of Catalonia require it’. The resolution demands that the government take ‘all appropriate steps and decisions’ and devote ‘the technical and human resources necessary in order for the referendum to be carried out with all the possible democratic and participatory guarantees’.
The governing centre-right CiU, the left-leaning, historically pro-secessionist ERC, the green left coalition ICV-EUiA and the radical left new political party CUP favour ‘providing all the support needed for the 9-N vote on the political future of Catalonia to take place’ and to put to the people the same questions that the four political parties had already agreed on. The wording of the resolution spells out the content of the double question accorded on 12 December last (Do you want Catalonia to be a state? And, if so, do you want Catalonia to be an independent state?).
The resolution states that the people of Catalonia have expressed ‘in a very clear way’ their will to freely decide their future, and ‘have acted throughout this process loyally and in accordance with this mandate, as have the president and the Government’. The resolution also makes reference to the declaration of sovereignty adopted on 23 January, 2013, noting that it retains ‘full political validity’. Furthermore, the resolution stresses that the process toward independence should continue to be governed by the principles established in the declaration.
The four parties also draw attention to the fact that the Generalitat’s Council for Statutory Guarantees, the government body charged with ensuring the adequacy and constitutionality of Catalan laws, has advised that all the articles in the referendum bill are constitutional and statutory. The resolution also makes mention of the Spanish Constitutional Court’s recent ruling that the declaration of sovereignty approved by the Catalan Parliament is illegal. The aforementioned elements, according to the political parties involved in the resolution, stand as evidence that there are sufficient ‘legal arguments’ to hold a referendum ‘with all the necessary legal basis, given that they [the legal arguments] explicitly recognize the democratic principle’.
The declaration lauds the fact that the will of the majority of the people to exercise their right to decide has been expressed in a ‘civic and multitudinous manner year after year, including in this year’s V’.
Mas noncommittal on Junqueras offer
The second day of the General Policy Debate in the Catalan Parliament saw a bombshell moment when the president of the historically pro-independence Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Oriol Junqueras, began his address with the following emphatic statement: ‘We want to be a part of the government in order to fail-safe the referendum. We would not only be happy to be a part of the government, let the president take note: we wish to be a part of it’. Junqueras insisted that the 9-N referendum is the only good option: ‘It is the best instrument and, from our point of view, practically the only one at our disposal.
In his reply to Junqueras, President Mas said that the referendum was already fail-safe under the current government. Mas added that he had already asked Junqueras to enter the government on more than one occasion, but Junqueras had refused for reasons he had failed to explain. Mas pointed out that he and Junqueras could discuss the possibility in a more appropriate setting, and invited ERC to join the government not in order to make the referendum fail-safe, which it already is, Mas said, but to ensure that the results are ‘unquestionable, universally valid and that there is not a single doubt about what the Catalan people want’. ‘And that depends solely on us, it does not depend on Madrid.’
