Friday, March 29

Borràs assumes the presidency of Junts but Turull makes a coup in the vote


The Junts congress should be calm and bloodless, with a unity candidacy between Laura Borràs and Jordi Turull who takes the reins this Saturday as president and general secretary, respectively. However, Turull has won an unexpected victory in the voting when he has become the name that has obtained the most individual support from the bases, with 1,854 votes, against the 1,776 that Borràs has won. Even the candidate for one of the vice presidencies, Anna Erra, has obtained more, 1,791 in total. The order of the votes does not change the positions that each one will occupy, but it allows the former minister to demonstrate that he would be capable of facing a battle against Borràs before the bases, which will be important in the second part of the congress, on the 16th and July 17, when they must agree on how to distribute organic power.

The return of Jordi Turull, the eternal second of Convergència who takes the reins of Junts

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Borràs and Turull have thus taken over the reins of Junts, taking over from Carles Puigdemont and Jordi Sànchez. The former is retiring to focus on European issues and as an MEP; the second after two years in which he has had some internal opposition that has ended up wearing him down as an effective leader. The new stage will be led by the Borràs-Turull tandem and should serve as a boost for a party that in recent years has seen how it lost electoral strength and, along with it, the presidency of the Generalitat.

Despite the fact that the moment that the formation is experiencing is not sweet, the interventions of both the outgoing leaders and the incoming Executive have made it clear that there will be no ideological turns. “This is the country of San Volvamos! [sant tornem-hi,]!”, proclaimed Turull, who has claimed a Junts that continues to influence the path of confrontation. “We have not come to negotiate resignation but to make determination emerge,” said the Secretary General. In the morning, Puigdemont had called on his party not to abandon the path of independence despite the “resignations and demobilization” of the movement, while Sànchez had stressed that the path of dialogue with the Government is useless.

In her first speech as president of Junts, Borràs declared herself a “puigdemontist”. “Being a puigdemontista is being an independentista and if in Junts per Catalunya we are independentistas, but it is also being an ambitious, incorruptible, committed, determined and independentista with a will to sum up and a sense of country”, she has said. After a long distribution of thanks to both the outgoing team and various people who have accompanied the party over the last five years, Borràs has assured that the new unit executive is “the image of solvency to advance towards independence”.

This Saturday’s congress must be, in the words of the new president, a “turning point” that “promotes” the party. The leader has also marked the main milestones that she has in her formation ahead of her: the writing of the new papers, in the second part of the congress and the preparation of the municipal lists. “Add to multiply is not a motto or a slogan, it is what I ask you to practice every day, because united we are stronger”, she has claimed.

The arrival of Borràs to the highest organic position of the formation coincides with one of the worst moments of his judicial case for corruption, after an official accused in the cause of the finger contracts of the Institution of Catalan Letters (ILC), Roger EP, has provided new evidence against the President of Parliament. Also in recent days, elDiario.es has exclusively published the audios that show that Laura Borràs asked this same official to notify her if the Mossos presented themselves to the ILC asking about the suspicious contracts.

Beyond the clouds in his judicial future, Borràs must now agree with Turull on the distribution of the executive functions of Junts, a commitment that she herself demanded to agree to join the joint candidacy and avoid a divided congress. This weekend’s vote, however, has revealed that the great pull of the President of the Parliament between the bases, which has always been her main weapon, has suffered in recent months. On her part, Turull has been able to bring together various sectors of the party and takes over from a general secretary who, since the birth of the party, had had broad executive powers but now must share.



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