“I hope we are companions on the road,” said Joseba Asiron, the EH Bildu candidate who on Sunday, May 28, achieved the best electoral results in the history of the nationalist left in Pamplona yesterday.. The “comrades” that Asiron has are the Navarrese socialists and the “path” must lead to the re-election of María Chivite in Pamplona and, even, to that of Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa. To this end, the PSOE of Navarra maintained its commitment yesterday not to vote for Arnaldo Otegi's candidate and, with five blank votes, made it easier for Cristina Ibarrola (UPN) to take over the leadership of the Pamplona Mayor's Office.

The solemn gesture with which the new mayoress of Pamplona grasped the symbol of her power separated the two sequences of a tense investiture. Ibarrola arrived at the Pamplona City Hall after observing the extensive police deployment deployed in the surroundings. A broad operation to avoid incidents between the two concentrations of UPN and EH Bildu militants held during the plenary session.

Inside the Pamplona Town Hall, the uncertainties about the final result in the rich liturgy of the act of proclamation of the mayor or mayoress dissipated before the twelve bells sounded at noon. Asiron's election was deflating after a very last phone call on Friday to Elma Sáiz (PSN) while the third way to make Koldo Martínez (Geroa Bai) mayor also vanished before the plenary session began. Inside, the Socialists kept their word and gave a political wink to their left-wing “comrades” by using their ballot papers to vote blank and not their spokesperson.

Ibarrola added 11 supports (9 from UPN and 2 from the PP) and Asiron gathered his 8 votes plus the 2 from Geroa Bai and Txema Mauleón from Contigo Navarra. Ibarrola's proclamation and his speech were applauded, also by Joseba Asiron, elegant in the plenary hall and before the media.

And it was in that second sequence of the investiture where the EH Bildu candidate sweetened the consequences of the “veto” he had suffered from the PSOE of Navarra. “It is a bad principle”, he acknowledged about the consequences of the socialists not facilitating their investiture when EH Bildu allowed María Chivite's inauguration in 2019 as president of the regional government. Asiron, but also the rest of the spokespersons for the parties that call themselves “progressive” in Navarra, took it for granted that Chivite will repeat as president with the votes of PSN, Geroa Bai and Contigo Navarra and the abstention of the 9 parliamentarians from Otegi.

“Start a new time”

Asiron and his socialist “companion” Elma Sáiz share the objective of joining forces in the “opposition” to condition the leadership of Mayor Ibarrola. The socialist spokesperson and former counselor for Chivite came to appeal to “coexistence” while the cries of “UPN, kanpora!” (UPN, out in Basque) of the nationalist supporters overlapped their words. “A new time begins in Pamplona,” warned Sáiz enigmatically, who also avoided charging the inks against Asiron for not supporting a third way used as a political mockery by the PSN after whitewashing Bildu in Navarra. Sáiz, shocked when he left the City Hall between whistles, has avoided photos with Bildu and the explicit pact to support Asiron to protect Sánchez in the middle of the pre-campaign for the generals.

Basque independentists and Navarrese socialists recognized the “fluid contact” in recent weeks and will reactivate it when, after 23-J, the investiture of Chivite in the Foral Government is faced. Bildu, PSN and Geroa Bai rule out, for the moment, an imminent motion of censure against Ibarrola that, as soon as the plenary session ended, the Podemos spokesman announced as a solution after the “failure” of the negotiations to prevent the investiture of Ibarrola. The new mayor, smiling, appealed to the “responsibility” of all groups. Aware of the huge challenge he faces, he recalled that “we all build Pamplona”.