One former Catalan president steps aside, another hopes to be re-invested by Skype!

Artur Mas prepares to fight court battles while Carles Puigdemont remains in Brussels

Just a week before the new regional parliament of Catalunya convenes, the separatist parties which secured a narrow majority of seats in the election on 21^st December are involved in frantic negotiations as they attempt to agree on who will be proposed as the president of the new government, and the latest news appears to indicate that the candidate decided upon will be none other than Carles Puigdemont.

Sr Puigdemont, it will be remembered, was the president until he was removed from office by the national government in Madrid following the events of 27^th October, when a unilateral declaration of independence was made in the Catalan parliament. Just two days later he travelled to Brussels to avoid detention while under investigation for sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds, and there he remains.

But despite his absence (or “exile”), the former president and leader of the PDeCAT party is reported to have negotiated the basis of an agreement with Marta Rovira, the leader of the ERC party, which would theoretically allow him to gain enough support in a presidential investiture debate to be re-appointed before the month is out.

However, if such an agreement has indeed been reached, there are uncertainties regarding exactly how the voting in such a debate will take place. Sr Puigdemont and four of his companions are still in Belgium and therefore cannot physically register their votes in the Catalan parliament, while the same is true of four of his former ministers who are currently in Madrid jails while being investigated for similar alleged wrongdoings.

Unless approval is given for an unprecedented procedure such as voting by Skype, their votes cannot be cast, an eventuality which would leave a separatist coalition without the parliamentary majority it won in the regional election on 21^st December. And if Sr Puigdemont and his colleagues in Brussels do attempt to attend the investiture debate, they will almost certainly be arrested as soon as their presence in Spain is detected.

Meanwhile, Sr Puigdemont’s predecessor as president of the Catalan government Artur Mas, resigned on Tuesday from his post of president of the PDeCAT party, explaining that he is making way for “new leaders” and remarking wryly that this is not the first time he has stepped aside in this way. Under two years ago, he renounced his candidature to be re-appointed president in order to make way for Carles Puigdemont, after it proved impossible to form a separatist alliance with him as president of the regional government.

At the same time, though, it can be supposed that Sr Mas will be devoting more time to preparing his defence in forthcoming court cases.

On the same day another re-elected separatist MP, Carles Mundó of the ERC, also renounced his seat in the new parliament, citing “personal reasons”, but some analysts see these resignations as expressions of discontent with the way in which Sr Puigdemont is attempting to create a new government in Catalunya while at the same time maintaining that he is the rightful “president in exile”.

Image (EFE, fully copyrighted): Artur Mas following his resignation as president of PDeCAT on Tuesday

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