C’s foresees a bad result for pro-independence parties in 2017

Barcelona (CNA).- The Liberal and unionist party Ciutadans (C’s) predicts that the independence process in Catalonia will come to a dead end in 2017. The spokesman of C’s in the Catalan Parliament, Carlos Carrizosa, said in an interview with the CNA that voters in Catalonia will have to go to the polls next year because, according to him, the current government will collapse. “This very unstable government has the support of an unreliable and dangerous ally, the CUP, and it will not be able to survive beyond 2017. There will be elections and their result will worsen”, he stated.

In September last year, Junts pel Sí and CUP together achieved 48% of the vote. According to Carrizosa, they won’t be able to improve this result in a new election, and this will mark the beginning of the end of the independence process. The Catalan government roadmap towards independence, led by President Carles Puigdemont, already foresees the call of an early election next year, although for very different reasons.

The aim of Puigdemont and the Junts pel Sí government is to celebrate constituent elections, draft a Constitution and, after that, call a referendum to get the support of the people to declare independence. This roadmap, however, could change in the next few weeks, especially considering that Puigdemont will face a vote of confidence on the 28th of September and that CUP and civil society organisations such as the Catalan National Assembly are urging the government to call, instead, a unilateral referendum on independence (RUI).

According to Carrizosa, the parties that form the Junts pel Sí coalition – former Convergència (now PDE), and left-wing ERC - will find it “even harder to achieve an overall majority” in Parliament if there are new elections. “Their result will worsen, and all this adventure will become a huge waste of time”, he warned. The spokesman of C’s in the Catalan Parliament added that the process towards independence “is only dividing Catalan society”.

Carrizosa also warned Carles Puigdemont and the Catalan Parliament President, Carme Forcadell, that they are “going too far” in their independence plans. “They are trying to defy the law”, he regretted, urging the Spanish judiciary system to act to stop them. “When the executive power fails, the judicial power needs to intervene”, he pointed out. “If they want to organise a unilateral referendum, the institutions will need to work. We’ll do the politics and the courts will have to do whatever they need to do”, he stressed.

C’s is negotiating with the Spanish People’s Party (PP) in order to form a government in Madrid. The liberal party, led by Albert Rivera, got a worse result than expected in the June Spanish election, getting 32 seats, eight less than in December 2015. Both PP and C’s totally reject negotiating a referendum in Catalonia and have on several occasions in the past rebuffed calls from Barcelona to discuss the issue.