The general coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, said that his political party would vote in favor of the state budget, even if it negotiated them, and he believes that President Pedro Sánchez “will lose.” “The replacement is PP-Vox,” he warned.
In an interview with Radio Popular-Herri Irratia, collected by EP, Otegi considered that Sánchez had “the will to stay“Let’s see what happens with the budgets, knowing what the difficulties are,” he added.
After ensuring that they were ready to support the public accounts, he indicated that they still had to negotiate and, in fact, both sides have already started talking. However, he admitted that there is “a major problem, namely that conventional politics and the partisan interest prevails on general needs,” he stressed.
Arnaldo Otegi recalled that “the support of this government on the Basque side has been quite solid, not only from EH Bildu, but also from the PNV”. “I think that we are both recognizable in our interests, in what we defend, but I believe that the PNV and EH Bildu maintain a certain serenity of mind and a a certain responsibility” he said.
In this sense, he stressed that both parties are “quite serious”. “I don’t want to say that the others are not, but we are at least predictable. And what we are saying is: do you have a better alternative than that of the current government of the Spanish State?” he asked.
The leader of EH Bildu recalled that they are pro-independence and that, if there was a possibility of achieving independence, they would do it “tomorrow”, but, for the moment, this is not the case and for now “there is no better alternative” than that of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez.
Furthermore, he stressed that “it is good to stop the extreme right, because that already has a benefit in itself”, since “the rights of people, cities, nations, workers, women” are better protected.
However, he said that “there must be a programme agreed by all democratic reforms“, that is to say “what is not”. “So, everyone plays to get a little bit of what they think interests them, and I think that is the great weakness of this government,” he declared.
“We are not all the same”
He also believes that there is, in his opinion, “a second great weakness”, namely “not confronting an alternative territorial model to that proposed by the right” and defending “clearly that Spain is a plurinational state”. However, as he warned, “there are things that are misunderstood”.
“Why is singular financing going to be better understood? Because Spain is a plurinational state. If you start to take the opposite path, you are implying that you are doing a reform at the bottom that you do not dare to do at the top. I think that is one of the great weaknesses on the political level, but I think that This government will endureand I hope it will last,” he insisted.
Arnaldo Otegi is convinced that, if we assume that the State is plurinational, “everyone will want to be a nation“, but he stressed that the difference is that “nations have their own language.”
This is why he said that “here we are not all equal because the Constitution says that there are nationalities and regions.” “One thing is social equality and another is to understand that the model of distribution of political power in the State must obey a plurinational logic,” he said.
After acknowledging that it is “a difficult debate to conduct, especially given the history of the State and the fact that there are people here who insist on denying the obvious,” he called for respecting the existence of a “Basque nation and the distribution of political power will be based on that. “I hope and wish that one day the Spanish left can understand that sharing the territorial model with the right leads to an impasse,” he said.
