Otegi dresses EH Bildu as a "government party" to unseat the PNV

Josean Izarra Bilbao

Bilbao

Updated Sunday, March 31, 2024-19:56

Just half a dozen timid cries in favor of "independence" gave way to confirmation that the nationalist left has frozen its maximum policy to reach as many governments as possible in

Euskadi

and

Navarra

. Just three weeks before the appointment with the Basque ballot boxes and with the wrapping of the

Aberri Eguna

(Day of the Basque Homeland, in Basque), the coordinator of EH Bildu Arnaldo Otegi proclaimed that the priority now is to unseat PNV and PSOE from the institutional leadership in the Basque Country and Navarra to bring together "large social majorities." Opposite, the PNV maintains its conviction that it will win the

21-A

elections if, as

Andoni Ortuzar

claimed this Sunday , it is able to activate thousands of its undecided members.

EH Bildu, five years after it became a stable partner of

Pedro Sánchez

in

Congress

, presents itself as a "government party" and, as Otegi did this Sunday, uses the Pamplona City Hall

as

an example. "We are reaching the governments," congratulated Arnaldo Otegi this Sunday, the leader of the nationalist left who decided to give the PNV the Mayor's Office of

Vitoria

in 2015, the presidency of the Government to Sánchez in 2018 and the presidency of the Provincial Executive of Navarra to

María Chivite

(PSOE) in 2019.

On the verge of the most close electoral event in Basque political history, EH Bildu showed muscle with a demonstration in Pamplona - the capital of the nationalist Basque Country - and placed Otegi as the only speaker with the candidate for lehendakari

Pello Otxandiano

located between the rest of the sovereigntist leaders.

Otegi and Otxandiano already recognize in public that even winning the 21-A elections it is more than likely that PNV and the

PSE-EE

will reissue their agreement to continue governing together in Euskadi. But a victory at the polls on 21-A would consolidate the message that Otegi and Otxandiano repeat about the beginning of a "new political cycle" in which the PNV would no longer be indispensable to form new governments.

This Sunday, Otegi instructed his people to assume "governments with others" without opting for their future partners. At the moment, EH Bildu has only achieved the support of

Podemos

in Euskadi to co-govern in some city councils. But in Navarra - the political laboratory of the Abertzale left - it has managed to put together a motion of censure against

UPN

in the Pamplona City Council with the complicity of the PSOE and place

Joseba Asiron

as mayor with the PNV and Podemos as partners.

The mutation of EH Bildu into a "government party" would constitute an "intermediate scenario" that would facilitate increasing the "independence base" to aspire to a Basque Republic. This Sunday Otegi felt the need to point out that his response in the presentation of the Aberri Eguna to act "without haste" towards independence is due to the will to "go far" in an objective that only 23% of the voters share. Basques while 38% are against, according to the Basque Sociometer.

Otegi, with Mayor Asiron in Pamplona.EFE

An independence that has also practically disappeared from the PNV's argument even when celebrating the Aberri Eguna, a nationalist celebration that started in 1932 chaired by

Luis Arana y Goiri

, brother of the founder of Basque nationalism. The PNV filled the Plaza Nueva in Bilbao in an event of a marked electoral nature in which the candidate in the European elections, the candidate for lehendakari

Imanol Pradales

, the outgoing Basque president

Iñigo Urkullu

and the organic leader Andoni Ortuzar took part.

The president of

Euzkadi Burtu Batzar

(EBB) directly appealed to the undecided members of his party to make their wish that the PNV continue to govern in Euskadi and go to vote on 21-A. The nationalist voters who now doubt - up to 45,000 according to the latest

EL MUNDO

poll - and the abstentionists are the target of Ortuzar and Pradales to challenge EH Bildu for victory.

"It's close, but we're going to win," Ortuzar told his cadres and militants this Sunday just minutes before Arnaldo Otegi's intervention began in Pamplona. "We must mobilize the vote to the fullest," he urged his people in the face of the next 20 days of electoral contest with the aim of convincing the thousands of PNV voters (almost 100,000) that in the local elections of May 2023 They stayed at home. "What is at stake is not whether PNV is more than Bildu or Bildu more than PNV," Ortuzar warned that he intends to reactivate his followers by warning that the consequences of a change of government in Euskadi will extend beyond 2036.

The PNV contrasts its commitment to "stability" and "greater self-government" with an alleged "hidden agenda" of EH Bildu that Ortuzar used this Sunday. "Don't they have a hidden agenda out there, an agenda with their true intentions, which is what they would later implement if they govern, as happened in Gipuzkoa?" asked the PNV leader. "Can so much be changed in such a short time?" Ortuzar concluded, now doubting the intentions of a nationalist left willing to replace him at the head of Basque governance.