‘Puigdemont will be sworn in as president’ insists JxCat

Together for Catalonia (JxCat) continues to pressure for Carles Puigdemont to be sworn in as Catalan president. An internal document sent to the party’s MPs-elect insists that its main candidate “stood in an illegitimate election” and that “all that can be expected is for the State to accept the result.”

“Puigdemont will be sworn in as president. The State cannot prevent it,” says the JxCat document, which adds that  pro-independence supporters have no intention of “compromising on the democratic principle that whoever is democratically elected has to be invested as president.”

The document also points out that the JxCat campaign message was, “for the president to return, vote for the president,” a message that the party says the public heeded, as shown by the December 21 election results. “What the people have voted for, the Parliament cannot change,” insists the document.

“Extraordinary” result of an “illegitimate” election

Calling the election result “extraordinary”, the JxCat document considers the ballot to have been “illegitimate” and carried out in a climate of “violence, imprisonment and exile, and the suspension of institutions. President Puigdemont is the great victor of the election,” it says.

The party also says it is confident that “the Catalans will not consider it normal if the result is not accepted, in the same way that it was not normal that they were attacked for going to vote on October 1,” and that “the problems caused by the State need to be resolved by the State.”

Finally, the document calls for those in favor of a Catalan republic to “defend the institutions” and poses the question of when the Spanish government intends to “withdraw Article 155”, the clause in the Spanish constitution used by the central government to suspend Catalonia’s self-rule.