JxCat deputy and candidate for investiture as president of Catalonia, Jordi Turull, has asked the Catalan Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent, to go ahead with the plenary session scheduled for this Saturday, his lawyer, Jordi Pina, has said. Following CUP's abstention, Turull failed to get enough votes in a first-round debate yesterday, resulting in the second-round being scheduled for Saturday. That time he would only require a simple, not an absolute, majority to be invested president.
The deputy, via his lawyer, has called for a long-distance investiture debate to be held, whilst aware that it's an decision which the Parliament's governing Bureau will have to consider. The option has been declared illegal by Spain's Constitutional Court. Turull, alongside four fellow deputies, was sent into pretrial detention today by the Supreme Court over his role in events surrounding last year's independence referendum.
Turull also asked all deputies to vote for him, for "an imprisoned person", "for dignity and for justice" and reiterated his wish for dialogue with the Spanish state.
"They can imprison him but not his ideas", Pina told the media at the entrance to the Supreme Court. According to the lawyer, Turull has already delegated his vote for tomorrow's debate, but counts out any possibilities of the candidate being able to attend in person, following the precedent of previous candidate Jordi Sànchez.