Former Catalan president Artur Mas has this Tuesday announced that he is stepping down at president of PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party). "I'm stepping aside again. And today it's precisely two years since the first time", he said, recalling the expression he used when, on 9th January 2016, he ceded the Catalan presidency to Carles Puigdemont.
The decision, he explained, is in order to take advantage of the unexpected boost JuntsXCat has given the PDeCAT project. He also said that he wants to leave space for the appearance of new leaders and to be able to dedicate more time to the legal cases he is facing over his role in the independence movement. In no circumstances, he insisted, is it in response to differences with Puigdemont over the strategy to take with regards to the new legislature. "President Puigdemont has to take his own decisions and, whatever they are, I will respect them", he said. He also said this doesn't represent him retiring from politics.
To great media interest and watched from the front row of the packed press room by the party's senior leadership, he explained that he has sent a letter to the party's coordinator, Marta Pascal, and the membership explaining the two reasons which led him to take this decision.
Boost to the project
The first, more political of his two reasons is JuntsXCat's results from 21st December, with a formula that went beyond PDeCAT's expectations, which has been attributed to the work carried out around the territory with people from outside the party who joined the candidacy headed by Puigdemont.
"It was an electoral formula born in Belgium in a visit we made one Saturday invited by the president. It wasn't an imposed formula", he said to dispel any suspicions of confrontation with Puigdemont.
For the former president, this result opens an opportunity for PDeCAT, through the JuntsXCat formula to achieve "a point of acceleration", towards which he doesn't want to act as "a break", but to help the expansion. "This new phase requires new leaders and to leave free space for specific people to be able to lead the project into the future", he said, adding that it's the same argument that lead him to "step aside" as president of Catalonia.
In his opinion, JuntsXCat's result again puts what his former Convergència party represented on the first row and the best way he can contribute to this boost is to leave free space for new leaders to appear. "The project is more important than any individual", he insisted.
Legal calendar
His second reason is the legal calendar he has to face in the near future, following the sentence of a ban from public office for his role in the unofficial 2014 referendum, pending ratification by the Supreme Court, and given the other case open at the Court of Accounts to be judged in the coming months. Moreover, today he has received a notification that he has been included in the expanded case into the events of the 1st October last year opened by the Supreme Court.
He said that everything points to a "complex path" and that he has thought about and discussed the decision for months. He said that he had talked about it before the 1st October referendum last year with president Puigdemont, with Marta Pascal and with people close to him. "It's not a hasty, last-minute decision, I've been thinking about it for a long time and I want to put it into effect now that a decisive race is starting," he said.
Not retiring from politics
Mas said he is not retiring from politics: "I remain very involved". "Life is very long and you don't know what could happen," he added. Being asked a question, in French, about this, he repeated that he remains available to explain to the world the reasons Catalonia aspires to being an independent state.
"First is the country, then comes the party, then the individual", he summarised, adding that "in no case should this be interpreted as distancing myself from the political project".
The former president also disassociated it from the decision in the Cas Palau corruption scandal case involving Convergència which will be announced next week. "Convergència paid a very high price and disappeared, even without a final verdict," he said. He also noted that he has not been implicated legally in any way in the case, even if he has admitted responsibility relating to the trust he placed in certain people.