JuntsxCat's spokesperson in the Catalan Parliament, Eduard Pujol, has said this Friday that "there is a plan" ("no way there wouldn't be by now") for investing their candidate, Carles Puigdemont, currently in Belgium, as president. In an interview with Ràdio 4, Pujol also said that the "negotiation, formulation, explanation" with future "government colleagues" doesn't have to take place in public.
ERC's secretary general, Marta Rovira, meanwhile, in an interview with Catalan news agency ACN, urged JuntsxCat to present their plan for an "effective investiture" of Puigdemont. "It's good that ERC has all the interest in the world to be able to resolve the investiture and tie up loose ends" towards a government program, said Pujol. He is convinced that Puigdemont "can be president" and warned that "it would be folly to give up on something that can happen".
For his part, ERC's leader, Oriol Junqueras, in an interview with online paper Diario16, proposed having two presidents: one symbolic and one executive. Without going into the suggestion in detail, Pujol lauded the search for solutions to the "stalemate" and that many people "are making great efforts to find a way".
Pujol, who took it for granted this Tuesday that there would be an investiture "with the [Parliament's] rules in hand", argued Puigdemont's name isn't "a whim", nor are they continuing with him due to momentum, but to "defend his rights and apply them". "We had understood, we had discussed and established that there had been an investiture debate convened, and if it was convened we felt called" to go there, said Pujol, without framing it within an agreement.
Despite the indefinite suspension of the investiture, Puigdemont's group doesn't expect the election will be repeated: "We're joining forces to form a government," said Pujol. When asked whether the number 2 on the candidacy's list, Jordi Sànchez, could be an alternative to Puigdemont, he replied that Sànchez, the former president of the Catalan National Assembly, is president of the parliamentary group and that he hopes he will be able to leave prison and carry out that role.
As he did on Wednesday in a long group meeting, Pujol closed ranks with Puigdemont over his messages to Toni Comín leaked by Telecinco, speaking of the "humanisation of politics". "How many times have we asked politicians to be people?" asked Pujol. In fact, he called on all politicians to work more "without filters of ideologies and party symbols" to "understand each other more".
The spokesperson also said that the comments from Spain's Justice minister, Rafael Catalá, about bans from public office before trials have taken place have generation "bewilderment". "The separation of powers has relaxed. One day the minister knows what will happen and when, I don't think that's normal", he said, expressing suspicions it's an "exercise in fear". "It's a failed exercise, such political practices should be avoided," he said.