The speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Laura Borràs, has delivered a fierce rebuke to the three parties that this Thursday moved to suspend her parliamentary rights and duties and provisionally remove her from the speakership after the Catalan High Court decided to send her to trial for alleged abuse of authority and document falsification when she was head of the Institute of Catalan Letters. Borràs made a speech in which she defended her strategy of not resigning and positioned himself as the victim of a persecution, and although she also acknowledged that her suspension brought with it a "personal frustration", she assured that she will not abandon her quest. And aside from not giving up, she focussed her comments on the "five deputies" who suspended her, referring to the two Socialists of the PSC, and three pro-independence representatives fom the ERC and the CUP, her fellow members of the Parliament's Bureau: "The very day that I became speaker I expressed the will to put up an unapologetic defence of the rights of deputies. Now I am prevented from doing so by MPs dressed as hypocritical judges who have applied an article to me that they knew they could apply to me to remove me politically."
Despite this decision, Borràs repeated her promise not to resign from the office or take any step aside to allow a replacement in her position, because she believes that she should not give an appearance of normality to what is happening in the Catalan chamber: "By maintaining my place, in addition to defending my innocence, I am forcing an interim situation", said the Junts leader, thus warning that she will not allow anyone to replace her during the judicial process: "I am not giving up and I will not give up before any court, I will continue to fight from the suspended speakership of this parliament until we see Catalonia free", she said, visibly angry.
Borràs, who did not participate in the Bureau meeting where the decision was taken to suspend her, in order to avoid any conflict of interest, has promised not to resign, nor to take any detour from the path to independence, and accused her "travelling companions" - referring to ERC and the CUP - of working with the sole expectation of Catalonia's "regional" status and only thinking of the "party". Faced with the fact that two pro-independence parties took part in suspending her, she said that this shows the weakness of the independence movement: "It is an unjust decision that harms democracy and independentism as a whole. It is a sign that repression is doing its work and has its consequences. Up until now, it was the voters who appointed speakers and presidents and it was article 155 which removed them, but no longer," she said, in reference to the constitutional article which allowed the Spanish government to impose its own rule on Catalonia in 2017.
Borràs stands up for the work done
She has proclaimed herself as the "first speaker" without a credit card, who does not receive MPs' meal subsidies and always stands up for the rights of the public, and has now condemned the fact that she has been suspended by a "terrible article that violates fundamental rights and creates legal uncertainty". Thus, she considers that ERC and the CUP have taken part in a dirty war to trample her democratic rights, through actions that have occurred on the same day as Parliament has allowed the telematic participation of the Catalan MP in exile Lluís Puig in a committee, as she pointed out.
"The best way to defend my innocence is by taking only steps forward in the fight against the injustice that I suppose will see me facing trial for crimes that I did not commit. I fully believe that the institution has been deliberately weakened by depriving it of the speaker. But I remain firm and determined to continue fighting", she said after once again declaring herself innocent of the actions she is accused of for her management at the head of the Institute of Catalan Letters.