While the president of the Government of Navarra, María Chivite, has assured this Thursday that it is “strictly legal” that there are 44 convicted of belonging to ETA -seven of them for murder- on the electoral lists of EH Bildu for the 28-M elections , the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has criticized without any filter the “lack of respect and consideration” of the abertzale formation towards the victims of terrorism.
Chivite, who has acknowledged that “I don't like” this decision by Bildu but that we must look to the future and for the coexistence of Navarra, explained that the lists are completely legal because the Electoral Board “approves” them.. In fact, he recalled that EH Bildu complies with the legal framework and that what the terrorist group was asked to do was lay down its weapons and form part of the democratic system.
[Irene Montero, on the ETA members on the 28-M lists: “Maximum respect, Bildu is a democratic party”]
“Going from violence to impose your ideas to the word, to agree on them, I think it is a success of democracy and of society as a whole. ETA disappeared 10 years ago. The future of Basque or Navarre society, like it or not, in certain places, like it or not, has to be built with Bildu”, Chivite asserted, citing the PP politician Borja Sémper, at an Informative Breakfast held today by Europa Press .
Urkullu: “It is disrespectful”
In the Basque Country, the Lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, has criticized the fact that there are 44 ETA convicts on the lists of EH Bildu, a party which he has accused of “lack of respect, consideration and sensitivity” towards the victims of terrorism.
“They have the right to appear on the lists but there is no right to demonstrate once again the lack of respect, consideration and sensitivity towards the victims”, he has censured.
Likewise, it has considered that it is not acceptable that the abertzale coalition does not have “the respect that is necessary towards the sensitivity of Basque society”. “There is no right to always have us in this permanent whirlwind,” he warned.
[Javier Lambán: “I'm not a sanchista. ERC and Bildu are undesirable allies, they want to destroy the country”]
convicted of murder
This Tuesday, the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) denounced that EH Bildu has presented 44 candidates in the Basque Country and Navarra who were convicted of belonging to and collaborating with ETA.
As reported by EL ESPAÑOL this Wednesday, Bildu presents two ETA members as candidates for the May 28 elections in the same municipalities where their victims were murdered. They are Lander Maruri Basagoiti, who is running as a substitute on the Bildu list for the Ciérvana City Council (Vizcaya) and Juan Ramón Rojo González, who is number 21 on the list for the Irún City Council (Guipúzcoa).
Lander Maruri Basagoiti (above) and Juan Ramón Rojo in an old and a new image, respectively.
Maruri Basagoiti was sentenced in 2001 to 16 years in prison for his complicity in the murder of the civil guard Jose Manuel Garcia Fernandez. The crime was perpetrated in 1997. With him, the ETA member was also sentenced Asier Uribarri Benito, another of the murderers who is on the lists of the Batasuna heir formation, in his case, by the Vizcaya town of Maruri.
As for Rojo González, he murdered two people in separate attacks. in 1991 riddled the young man in Irún Francisco Gil Mendoza. For that crime he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 1996.. Five months later, already in 1992, he killed a national police officer in Bilbao, for which he was sentenced to another 27 years in prison. Thirty years later he returns to the city as one of Bildu's candidates.
Both candidates, upon their release from prison, received their particular ongi etorri, the welcoming public tribute that is often shamelessly given to ETA assassins when they return home after serving their sentence.
[The ETA member who planned to kill Mayor Rita Barberá is on Bildu's lists to be a councilor]
EH Bildu defends his lists
EH Bildu's candidate for the Presidency of Navarra, Laura Aznal, stated this Wednesday that the people sentenced for their membership of ETA who are part of the electoral lists of the coalition “They have all their rights intact, their political rights as well.”
Asked by the journalists about this issue, Aznal has opined that “all the press today shows a extreme nervousness by other political formations” and has indicated that “we are very calm, we have very good expectations ahead of these elections.
He has stressed that “in his day we presented some lists, these lists went through the Electoral Board that did not put any problem”. “All these people have all their rights intact, their political rights as well,” he stressed.
[The PSOE, powerless in the presence of ETA assassins on the Bildu lists: “Better votes than bullets”]
Irene Montero: “Bildu is democratic”
The leader of Podemos and Minister of Social Rights, Ione Belarra, pointed out this Thursday that today the situation is “very different” from that of 10 years ago and that the right “does not know how to campaign without talking about the terrorist band”.
Yesterday the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, who this Wednesday declined to comment on the presence of those convicted of belonging to or collaborating with ETA on the Bildu lists and limited herself to stressing that the formation of the nationalist left is “a democratic party” that elects the candidates it considers “opportune”.
From the other wing of the Government, the PSOE spokesman in Congress, Patxi López, has recognized that does not like anything” that EH Bildu include 44 people convicted in the past for belonging to ETA on its lists for the Basque Country and Navarre for the May 28 elections.
For his part, the ERC parliamentary spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, stressed that Bildu is a nationalist force that “likes more or less” is “important in the Basque Country and does politics” and recalled that ETA “has not existed for more than a decade “. “And this is not debatable, it is pure information. On the other hand, fascism continues to exist, we see demonstrations, positions and even attacks with fascism behind it and there is still representation of these ideas and people condemned for these ideas.”
From the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo has opined that the governability of Spain cannot rest on a party like Bildu, which has people “convicted of murder” on its lists. As he stressed, this type of agreement between Pedro Sánchez and that formation confirms that “sanchismo” must be “repealed”.
The Vox spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, maintains the same line, who considers that this shows that calling the members of the Abertzale coalition “filoetarras” is “to fall short” because they are “etatarras”.
