Romeva, necessary explanations

Antoni Bassas
2 min

I don’t know how many of the Junts pel Sí (“Together for Yes”) voters have as their main concern who the candidate for president will be, or whether or not Artur Mas’ continuity is a condition for many of them. But I suspect that they are far fewer than their electoral rivals for 27- S must have calculated. Because for months now many of those who will vote for Junts pel Sí have been more worried about having a strong ticket, and that the parties act in accord with a simple criterion: that for extraordinary elections there be an extraordinary campaign and extraordinary candidates.

Many of them had hoped for a temporary union of parties and independent candidates so as to turn the elections, to the extent that it is possible, into the referendum that the Spanish state has prohibited. And many of those voters do not understand the simplistic portrayal that paints Mas as Catalonia’s Rajoy. For many reasons: because after the Catalan Statute was struck down --the last straw for Catalan dignity--, those people shifted towards independence like Mas did. Because Mas has lured essential social and economic sectors to the independence movement, in an attempt to win. And because they value his leadership in the most disruptive political decision that Spain has seen in decades: the holding of the consultation on 9-N.

In these circumstances, the eventual voters for Junts pel Sí are much more interested in a clear victory in favor of independence than in the resulting distribution of positions, because they know that no policy, on the right or the left, is possible with the current distribution of power in Spain.

But everything considered, clarity is the obligation of any politician. A government will emerge from 27-S, and the explanations given yesterday by Romeva were necessary-- and preparatory: they confirm that the principal line of attack on Romeva will be the fact that he and Mas are running on the same ticket, an argument that is beginning to sound poor and overworked.

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