Josean Izarra Bilbao

Bilbao

Updated Sunday, March 31, 2024-12:50

"It's close, but we're going to win," Andoni Ortuzar encouraged his cadres and members in the celebration of 'Aberri Eguna' (Basque Homeland Day). An independence celebration that, in the midst of the long electoral pre-campaign, has focused on convincing undecided nationalist voters not to stay at home on 21-A. "We must mobilize the vote to the maximum," Ortuzar insisted just three days after EL MUNDO published that the result in the Basque elections will depend on the almost 45,000 voters who in 2020 supported Urkullu and are now undecided.

"There are many people still undecided between going to vote or abstaining. Most of them say that, if they went to vote, they would vote for PNV. It is them and they who we have to approach. We have to make them see what is at stake," Ortuzar has emphasized in the last of the interventions with which the PNV has skirted the traditional celebration of 'Aberri Eguna' to turn it into a powerful pre-electoral event. Ortuzar, as he already did at the start of the pre-campaign in Durango, maintains that the PNV will win the elections but did not want to specify whether this victory will be achieved in seats or only in votes.

All surveys, including that of Sigma Dos for EL MUNDO, confirm a tie between PNV and Bildu in seats with a range that ranges between 26 and 28 parliamentarians for each of the two nationalist parties. Ortuzar, four days before the electoral campaign begins, maintains his conviction in the victory of the PNV but needs all of his former voters to go to the polls.

The leader of the PNV has tried today to convince those undecided with the future significance of the result of 21-A and with the doubts surrounding the true intentions of EH Bildu. "Don't they have a hidden agenda, an agenda with their true intentions, which is what they would later implement if they govern, as happened in Gipuzkoa?" Ortuzar asked after confirming that the Abertzale left tries to avoid any controversy.

Furthermore, Ortuzar - in line with his candidate for Lehendakari Imanol Pradales - has stressed that the 21-A electoral event is "very, very, very important" because he will elect a government that will have to adopt changes to face a triple transition. A triple challenge made up of "the energy transition and ecological sustainability; the technological revolution that the digital transition will bring us and a social transition that proposes solutions to the problems of an increasingly aging society." Ortuzar closed an event in which speakers such as Imanol Pradales and the outgoing Lehendakari Iñigo Urkullu also participated.