The left-wing platform Sumar, which intends to return to govern Spain in coalition with the socialists, defended this Tuesday the application of the amnesty for Catalan independentists and recalled that in the past the right even pardoned terrorists.
“The amnesty is recognized in international treaties,” it is adopted “normally throughout Europe” and “it is a current figure in the Spanish legal system,” said deputy Enrique Santiago, who highlighted that it is not even “expressly prohibited in the Constitution”. “, so it is “a power of the legislator”, that is, of parliament.
Enrique Santiago, general secretary of the Communist Party of Spain and member of Izquierda Unida, one of the 15 left and extreme left forces that make up Sumar, intervened in the parliamentary debate that began this Tuesday in Madrid on the candidacy for president of the Government of El leader of the Popular Party (PP, right), Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The PP recognizes that it does not have enough support in Parliament to reach the Government and has warned that the next will be the socialist Pedro Sánchez who will try to be re-elected president of the Government and that to obtain the votes of the Catalan parties it is preparing to grant an amnesty to the independentists involved in the attempt at self-determination in Catalonia in 2017.
The PSOE has never confirmed, until now, the possibility of an amnesty, which the right considers unconstitutional and an attack on the division of powers and democracy.
The person who took up the defense of the amnesty this Tuesday and guaranteed that it is legal was Sumar, who with the PSOE ran in the July 23 elections with the declared intention of governing together again.
Deputy Enrique Santiago recalled that the former president of the PP, José María Aznar, granted thousands of pardons, which covered 15 members of an already dismantled Catalan terrorist group (Terra Lliure) and that also the former leader of a popular government Mariano Rajoy proposed amnesties ” justly”. to reduce tension in Catalonia.”
Enrique Santiago affirmed that the amnesty, according to international law, has among its objectives to promote “reconciliation and reestablish normal relations in the life of a country.”
“The amnesty is always the end of a normalization process and in this case it will be after a great understanding between Catalonia and the rest of the State,” he stated.
The deputy also recalled that Aznar also made agreements with the Catalan nationalists to be named President of the Government, but the PP only considers that “Spain is being dismantled” when it is the left that dialogues with the pro-independence parties.
“They do not accept the rules of democracy, they do not recognize the legitimacy of left-wing governments,” Enrique Santiago told the PP deputies, adding: “The truth is that Spain only runs the risk of disintegrating when the PP governs and the temperature rises.” . and generates conflicts everywhere.”
The PP “is a factory of independence” and “uses hatred and tension to get votes,” he accused, arguing that the dialogue process initiated in the previous legislature by the left-wing Government with the Catalan parties, which has already seen pardons As the separatists denounced, “it is normalizing the situation in Catalonia” and, in addition, “it brought the decline of the extreme right.”
“Maybe that’s why they don’t want to calm the situation in Catalonia,” said Enrique Santiago, who recalled that in Spain even the protagonists of an attempted coup d’état in 1982, which kept the country’s deputies kidnapped, were pardoned years later.
The deputies of the two Catalan independentists who participated in this Tuesday’s debate also insisted on the demand for amnesty to make a new PSOE and Sumar Government viable and confirmed that, on Wednesday, they will vote against Feijóo’s candidacy for prime minister. .
All the deputies of the left-wing parties (PSOE and Sumar) and the Catalan independence forces (Republican Left of Catalonia and Together for Catalonia) accused the PP and Feijó of having distanced themselves from Spanish society and of having made it impossible to reach an agreement that would allow them to reach the Government thanks to alliances with the far-right VOX.
During the debate this Tuesday, several deputies defending the amnesty gave the example of Portugal, referring to the recent amnesty in relation to the Pope’s visit or that of the 90s to members of the far-left group Fuerzas Populares 25 de Abril ( FP-25). which covered the soldier of the 1974 revolution Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho.
Recalling this and other amnesties in countries such as Northern Ireland, Germany and France, the Republican deputy for Catalonia Gabriel Rufián told the PP “that none of these countries have dismantled or have their democracy threatened.”
The debate continues on Wednesday, with the intervention of nationalist and independence parties from the Basque Country, Galicia, Navarra and the Canary Islands, before the plenary vote.
Source: TSF
