Laura Borràs, in Parliament. MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI
The President of Junts per Catalunya and former President of Parliament, Laura Borràs, spoke out this Sunday in favor of Aliança Catalana, a far-right pro-independence party, being allowed to govern in Ripoll (Girona), where she is based on the List with the most votes in the last elections of the 28-M. The party’s mayoral candidate and leader, Sílvia Orriols, tweeted on Saturday that she regretted that the remaining pro-independence groups would strike a pact to keep her out of government. “Together, Esquerra and CUP are one step away from reaching an agreement with the PSOE of 155 and quicklime to strip Ripoll of the mayor’s office,” he wrote. Almost 24 hours later, in a response to a user outraged by this possibility, Borràs gave his opinion on this cordon sanitaire to the Catalan extreme right: “I am not a supporter. I think if I agree that it is not right to go against the will of the people when it harms us, then it is also not right to do it when it benefits us.” Borràs later relativized his position on the same social network and asserted he had “always” fought against the far right, but added that the strategy of not letting the list with the most votes govern only exacerbated the problem.
A town of fewer than 11,000 in the historic heart of Catalonia, Ripoll is traditionally ruled by the Convergència, the predecessor party to the Junts per Catalunya. In the 2019 elections, Sílvia Orriols was represented in the consistory for the first time by finding her identity. The rest of the parties ignored it and in the municipal elections of the last 28-M, after a campaign of victimization in which it targeted the foreign population, it received the most votes with Aliança Popular: six out of a total of 17 councillors. He was far from an absolute majority and will not be able to take over the baton if the remaining parties reach an agreement. Junts achieved 3 councillors; CKD, 3; the PSC, 2; the MUG, 2; and an independent group, 1.
I am not socially partisan. I don’t think it’s right when I defend that it’s contrary to the will of the people if it’s harmful; Fer-ho quan ens afavoreix, neither nor.
— Laura Borràs 🎗 (@LauraBorras) June 11, 2023
Since winning the elections, Orriols has been very active on social media to denounce what she believes is a mistake: not allowing her to govern after she was on the list with the most votes. This Saturday he again brought charges against a pact made by the rest of the parties that allowed him to denounce his isolation in the consistory since 2019 and ended up making him stronger. “Keep this in mind when you are told you are a Democrat and an Independent,” he wrote, along with his campaign slogan (Salvem Cataluña). Shortly thereafter, another tweeter spoke of a “sectarian and miserable maneuver” and questioned Borràs, calling her a “victim of instrumentalization” of the judiciary: the former Speaker of Parliament was sentenced to four and a half years in prison and 13 years disqualification for corruption crimes he committed by cutting up contracts to handwrite to a friend of his while he was at the helm of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC).
Borràs has caused a stir with a tweet suggesting that he thinks the right thing to do would be to let Aliança Catalana’s Ripoll rule. The news comes as left-wing parties in the community are taking steps to reach an agreement and persuade junts to lend them their investiture votes. The left forces do not have an absolute majority and need the support of the neoconvergents for this process; otherwise, Orriols would become mayor in the second ballot because he tops the list with the most votes. Their aim is to prevent Aliança Catalana, a party with a clearly anti-Islamic and identity-based discourse, from governing the community.
A few hours later, Borràs himself qualified her words in a series of tweets, in which she asserted that she had always fought against the extreme right. His position, he explained, is to let the list with the most votes rule, thereby opening the door for a later censure motion: “Letting them rule for a while can lead to a censure motion when everyone sees their votes. “ true colors when everyone sees whether they can govern or not, and then throws them out without victimizing them and without letting them grow,” he emphasized.
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1 Because of the absolute determination with which I have always fought the extreme right, I have said that the general agreement is to respect the list with the most votes.
Badalona’s example of not letting them govern not only solves the problem, it exacerbates it.— Laura Borràs 🎗 (@LauraBorras) June 11, 2023
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