Foreign Affairs Minister appeals to the "responsibility" of PSC to avoid election postponement from ending up in court

Socialists talk of "electoral fraud" and insist they are studying whether to resort to justice

Ara
3 min
Una imatge del conseller d'Acció Exterior, Bernat Solé, davant de l'ordinador, cedida pel Govern

BarcelonaThe Generalitat has published in the DOGC of this Saturday the suspension of the elections of the 14-F, and also the forecast that they will be held on May 30. However, the controversy over the change of date is still ongoing, to the extent that during the next ten days there is room to take the postponement to the courts of justice. The PSC is one of the parties that has announced that it is studying this possibility because it considers that the Government's decision -which is supported by most parliamentary groups- does not respond to public health criteria but to electoralist ones. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernat Solé, who is also responsible for the electoral processes, has demanded "responsibility" from the Socialists to avoid the courts from having to end up deciding on this issue. "The PSC should reflect on whether a higher court (TSJC) should determine whether citizens can vote or not, and whether they can do so in a complex epidemiological situation such as the one we will have on February 14", he said in an interview with the programme Via Lliure of RAC-1 radio station.

The fact that, for example, the perimetral lockdowns during the pandemic had to be validated by the courts is not a reason, according to Soler, for the same thing to happen now with the elections, because the powers to call them belong to the Generalitat. However, the electoral law does not provide for postponements - despite the precedent of last year in the Basque Country and Galicia - and there is no one in the Government who has the power to call elections - only the President can do so, and since the disqualification of Quim Torra, the Generalitat does not have a President. In fact, Solé has complained precisely about the fact that the Generalitat had no margin to decide the election date, since the elections were called automatically on 22 December. Be that as it may, it wasn't until this week that the Government took a clear position in favour of postponing the elections due to the increase in covid-19 infections and the high occupation of ICU beds in the hospitals.

The PSC, on the other hand, insists that it will continue to study whether to pursue the postponement in court. Also at RAC-1, Socialist spokesperson Eva Granados has once again deplored the decision and attributed it directly to partisan criteria. "What we are refusing to do is to hold elections on May 30 for a reason that is not epidemiological. Today's data is better than October's", she stressed. "If we get like this, what we could decide is to suspend democracy until the pandemic is over", she concluded. Granados said the PSC agreed to "postpone them for a few weeks" until the situation in hospitals improves, but not for three months as finally decided. The socialist deputy mayor of the Barcelona City Council was even more direct than Granados and referred to the postponement as "a real electoral fraud", in statements to the COPE radio station.

For his part, the Minister of Health and PSC candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat has avoided commenting on the postponement of the elections. "I am 101% focused on fighting the third wave and, more in the short term, to achieve that in summer 70% of the population is vaccinated", he said from the Spanish government delegation in Barcelona. Solé, however, has criticized the attitude of the Socialists, personifying it in Isla: "It is not possible for a Health Minister to say in the morning that the epidemiological data is very serious and in the afternoon, as a Socialist candidate, to say that elections can be held".

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