The Socialist Party of Navarra (PSN) led by Santos Cerdán yesterday represented its first gesture of distancing itself from EH Bildu, its most faithful ally in the foral community. It was an ordeal in Pamplona but with the objective of Ferraz that the dramatized pulse with the abertzale left spreads throughout Spain. Just one day after Pedro Sánchez announced the calling of the elections on July 23, the Socialist Party of Navarra accused Joseba Asiron of “imposing” the Basque language and the Ikurriña when he was mayor and accused him of street incidents of UPN as the one suffered by the mayor Enrique Maya in a procession on July 7, the day of San Fermín.
The Socialist Party of Navarra, led by the deputy and secretary of Organization of the PSOE Santos Cerdán, yesterday unleashed its first battery of disqualifications against EH Bildu to justify that it will not vote for Joseba Asiron on June 17. The candidate for Mayor and already elected councilor Elma Sáiz was in charge of activating the dialectical fire against Asiron just 24 hours after Pedro Sánchez announced the electoral advance to next July 23.
Sáiz relied, in an appearance called urgently, on his electoral commitment not to vote as mayors for Cristina Ibarrola (UPN) or Joseba Asiron (EH Bildu) to open the announced 'third way', an imaginative proposal with which the PSOE intends to stage its distancing from the Otegi coalition.
The PSN theoretically aspires to place Elma Sáiz as mayoress of Pamplona despite the fact that she was the third candidate in the polls with 5 councilors compared to 9 for Ibarrola and the 8 achieved by the Asiron list. But Sáiz activated a “proposal” yesterday to add Geroa Bai (2 councilors) and Contigo Navarra (1 councilor).
“We are the alternative to the right and to the independence movement”, assured Sáiz that “step by step” he aspires to present himself with 8 supports on June 17. Insufficient to reach a majority (14) unless EH Bildu ends up ceding at least 6 of its 8 councilors. Saíz did not take into account that hours before the president of the PNV Andoni Ortuzar had announced that the two councilors of Geroa Bai – a coalition of which the PNV is a part – will support Asiron.
The proposal activated by the PSN received an immediate response from Joseba Asiron: “The third routes are not and will not be on the table”. The EH Bildu candidate, however, ignored the reasons given by the PSN to veto him as mayor of Pamplona. Because the socialist Elma Sáiz accused the teacher of the ikastola (subsidized school in which only Basque is taught) of having practiced the “imposition” of Basque in nurseries and on the municipal staff when he was mayor between 2015 and 2019. In addition, Sáiz based his refusal to support Asiron in the “imposition” of the ikurriña by placing it next to the Navarra flag on the balcony of the Town Hall during the launch of the chupinazo on July 7.
As if that were not enough, Sáiz's broadside against his parliamentary partner in the Government of Navarra included splashing Asiron with the brawls committed by sympathizers of the abertzale left on Calle Curia during the last few Sanfermines and even the riots in the eviction of a gaztetxe (space occupied by young people) in Casco Viejo.
If Sáiz keeps his word and Asiron does too, on June 17 the plenary session of the Pamplona City Council will invest Cristina Ibarrola (UPN), the candidate with the most votes by the citizens, as mayor. Until then, PSN and EH Bildu will stage an apparent political row while the election of the president of Navarra is frozen.
At the polls, Javier Esparza (UPN) was the most voted and yesterday -in a carousel of high-voltage political appearances- he claimed his legitimacy to open the round of contacts with the rest of the parties. Esparza verified that the final decision of the Navarrese PSOE was adopted in Ferraz. “The campaign of the generals is going to go from this,” he stated in his appearance. And the “this” in Esparza's response is Pedro Sánchez's pacts with Bildu and its electoral cost throughout Spain. “There is a clamor in their own ranks [of the PSOE] that enough of the agreements with Bildu,” insisted Esparza, who recalled Otegi's “indecency” for placing 44 convicted of crimes linked to ETA as candidates on 28-M.
Esparza also demanded that Pedro Sánchez “for political honesty” clarify before 23-J if he will agree again with Otegi as he already did in 2019 that EH Bildu facilitate the investiture of María Chivite after the general elections.