MIQUEL ICETA 10/10/2020
Miquel Iceta is the leader of the Catalan Socialist Party
Catalonia has been lost for a decade. Almost ten years in which Catalan sovereignty has insisted on taking us in a great hurry and at full speed, sometimes even without brakes, towards the precipice. Warming emotions, contrasting identities and dividing society in half, the pro-independence forces opted years ago for the strategy of confrontation and sterile gestures as the best way to hide their impotence, their ineffectiveness and their incompetence.
From the tacticism of empty rhetoric, sovereign forces have damaged our economy, our society, our image and our expectations without achieving any benefit. Not one. Collecting defeats and accumulating frustrations, the path to independence has served nothing more than to try to hide cuts and mismanagement of public resources with poor results: fewer rights, fewer opportunities, more inequality, more precariousness and an evident loss of momentum in the economy. In short, we are where we are because the independence movement has brought us here.
Years of bad government have led to a scenario of social and economic decline and political and institutional degradation.
Catalonia is today, unfortunately, in a scenario of social and economic decline, with obvious political and institutional degradation, because we have not had good governments in the last ten years. And now, when the economic and social crisis will profoundly mark the post-Covid-19 period, we need a government that is up to the task, that does not hide its head under the wing or go off on a tangent, and that leads a collective effort to face, with determination and ambition, the immense challenge that lies ahead. With realism and unity. With optimism and a shared will to offer the best proposals for exiting the crisis and to work together, convinced that by doing so hand in hand with the rest of Spain and the EU, we will cope better.
Catalonia needs a change, but not just any change. It needs a change that ensures that the economy is reactivated and public services are strengthened. A change that ensures that the resources we have are efficiently managed. A change that offers legal certainty, political stability and confidence to attract, retain and promote new business and entrepreneurial projects, as well as to reactivate the industrial fabric, mistreated for too many years. A change that invests in knowledge and innovation, and that drives the ecological and energy transition and digitization.
Catalonia can and has to be a better country, but it needs a good government at the head with a president who thinks of all Catalans. We are at a decisive crossroads, and the socialist proposal is clear: social reconstruction, economic reactivation and harmony among Catalans. These are the foundations that support the policies that the PSC wants to undertake from the Government of the Generalitat. And we are convinced that everyone is essential for the construction of a Catalonia of all, based on the full and effective realization of the values of freedom, equality, fraternity, social justice, feminism, solidarity, territorial balance and ecology. It is precisely these values that push us to fight the battle for a better, more prosperous, just and sustainable society and economy, to lead a stage of progress and shared prosperity.
Catalonia needs a change, and this change goes through a new majority and a change of government. I want to head a progressive government, and I want to do it through dialogue and thinking about the whole of society. We socialists are a guarantee of solvency and good governance, essential to guarantee the social reconstruction of the country, its economic reactivation and harmony. Catalonia cannot wait any longer. Catalonia deserves a better government.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20201010/483968135740/catalunya-necesita-un-cambio.html
Add comment