The future of the Catalan Government is at stake in the consultation that coalition partner Junts is making of its rank and file membership this Thursday and Friday. Most of the party's leaders and senior officials have stated publically whether they think the party should remain within the executive or abandon it. Government ministers Jaume Giró and Gemma Geis as well as the president of the party, Laura Borràs, did so today. But there is one very significant exception: that of Jordi Turull, general secretary of the party. Turull stated on Monday that he would speak his mind and "would not turn away" from this. But, after the recommendation of "neutrality" made by the party electoral commission which is running the vote, he has decided not to reveal his preference. In spite of this, it is known that he is in the orbit of those who are committed to the party continuing as a part of the pro-independence Generalitat government, in which ERC (Catalan Republican Left) is senior partner, holding the presidency, with Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) running half the ministries.
This Wednesday afternoon, the electoral commission agreed to "urge the people who hold internal positions, both in the collegiate party organs - including the one-person ones - and representatives in the institutions, to refrain from using these positions to favour any of the options of the consultation and to remain neutral". And in the afternoon it made a second statement, after party president Laura Borràs's public statement, warning that they had detected "the use of Junts's official symbology, such as the logo and the colour, which could lead to confusion and cause people to think that [the views expressed] were official positions". And it asked party members to "refrain" from making use of this symbology.
It was in this context that Jordi Turull made his statement that he would not, in the end, speak out. "I wanted to wait for today's question session in Parliament to make my final position public, but given the appeal by the electoral commission, as general secretary I will not do so", justified the Junts leadership figure. And he added: "It is our strength and our reason for being. People of different origins and opinions, with internal debate, united by the 1-O referendum. These are the virtues that made us go further than ever as a country and the ones that will make us achieve independence".
Turull said in his tweets that he had been constantly talking to party members over the last few days, "listening to their views and giving mine", but the statement by the party electoral commission, led him to "put his neutrality in the service of the cohesion and strengthening" of the Junts party. He added that "everyone, regardless of their position and the result, has made clear to me their committment to carry on making Junts grow".
Borràs makes her view explicit
On the other hand, Laura Borràs, president of the party and suspended speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia, did not hesitate to explicitly state her well-known positioning in the 'No' camp, that is, in favour of leaving the Catalan executive. She argues that Pere Aragonès, senior ERC figure and Catalan president, leads a "government that has decided not to lead independence" and has no "democratic legitimacy". ERC, she said, has said "no to everything", to all attempts to "rectify its failure to comply" with the coalition agreement reached by the two parties in May 2021. And in her tweets this Wednesday she spells it out: "I will vote not to remain". Her move to take her position came shortly after the electoral commission set up for the consultation asked the internal and institutional office-holders of the party to maintain neutrality. Sources in the party president's circle affirm that her statement of position did not contravene the instruction because she did not use her internal position to campaign, but rather, simply expressed her opinion on her personal social media account.