"We want Puigdemont to lead the overflowing of the ballot boxes on 21st December." PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party) has listed president Carles Puigdemont as a candidate in the forthcoming elections on 21st December. The president had offered to stand as a candidate and his party have now accepted. The decision comes the same day that the president and the four ministers with him in Belgium have presented themselves voluntarily to a Brussels police station. PDeCAT's general coordinator, Marta Pascal, confirmed the decision in a press conference after the party's national council meeting today.
The party's decision, according to Pascal, includes the following agreements: on the one hand, Puigdemont is the candidate proposed to head their campaign; on the other hand, PDeCAT supports a cross-party candidature which "incorporates all sensibilities, similar to the proposal from ERC (Catalan Republican Left) and, finally, they call for the politicians removed from office by the Spanish government to be able to contest the elections. As for the configuration of the list of candidates, the party has discounted setting red lines. "We won't be the ones who set conditions," she said. Catalan elections are run via a closed-list proportional representation system with four constituencies, one for each of Catalonia's provinces.
Puigdemont called yesterday, via Twitter, for a joint list for the 21st December elections and offered himself as a candidate to lead such a list, an idea his party has now supported.
PDeCAT held an extraordinary national council meeting this Sunday to decide on their strategy for the 21st December elections after ERC did the same yesterday. The second party had proposed two alternatives: either a broad front against article 155 of the Spanish Constitution beyond their Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) union from 2015 with PDeCAT, to include Podem (We Can) and CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy) or, if that's not possible, that the parties stand separately.
After today's announcement by PDeCAT, the decision now falls to CUP. The deadline to present coalitions, this Tuesday, hasn't changed the party's plans to wait until Saturday to hold their assembly to decide on their strategy for the election.
Call for turnout
Pascal called for the public to vote in opposition to those who "practice the right of conquest" and "imprison honest people". The party asked for "extraordinary internal and external generosity", a message clearly aimed at ERC. "We can't allow the supporters of [article 155] and those who have given rise to imprisonments to be left with the institutions," she said.
The extraordinary national council meeting was marked by the absence of the party's ministers imprisoned on Thursday after responding to summons to the National Audience court in Madrid and the absence of the members of the Catalan Parliament's Board under investigation who are preparing their strategy for their appearance before the Supreme Court this Thursday, 9th November.