Publicado el 11 de diciembre de 2019 – 11: 23
Paul Preston, John Elliot and Benoit Pellistrandi are among the more than 500 intellectuals who, in recent weeks, have joined a manifesto promoted by the Teachers Forum to ask the PSOE (socialist party) not to negotiate outside the constitutional framework the conditions of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez.
A text warns that «democracy is losing legitimacy in Catalonia» and they point out to politicians that «the dialogue must take place within the institutions and under the democratic channels prescribed by the Statute of Catalan Autonomy and the Spanish Constitution”.
The manifesto “Call for dialogue between Catalan political representatives within democratic institutions”, has the support of 577 intellectuals, mostly Spanish, but has circulated through universities and cultural centers in Europe, America and Oceania and obtained support as prominent as those of Hispanists John Elliot (Oxford) and Paul Preston (LSE), Benoit Pellistrandi, the Danish Professor of Politics, Marlene Wind, who starred in a fiery debate with Carles Puigdemont at the University of Copenhagen, jurist Nicola Colacino and political scientist John Gastil, from the University of Pennsylvania .
Among the Spanish signatures are Nobel prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa and professors Fernando Savater, Carmen Iglesias, Francesc de Carreras, Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo, Benigno Pendás, Adela Cortina and Elías Díaz, as well as twriters Elvira Roca Barea, Andrés Trapiello , Enrique Krauze and Félix de Azúa. The manifesto has been made public coinciding with the third meeting between PSOE and ERC to negotiate Republican support for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. A negotiating process in which the Socialists have already assumed the need to resolve in “political conflict” in Catalonia and now negotiate an “equal roundtable” between Government and Generalitat outside the Bilateral Commission, recognized in the Statute.
In this context, the Teachers Forum warns against the “questioning of democratic mechanisms” which in its opinion is especially worrying in Catalonia. And it raises its conditions for the dialogue opened by the PSOE with the independentists. Thus, it proposes that «the democratically elected political representatives of the various parties that make up the Catalan parliament must initiate a dialogue to find a solution to the instability and growing social fracture created in Catalonia» an idea that the Socialists also defended until the beginning of these negotiations.
They add that this dialogue “must take place within the institutions and under the democratic channels prescribed by the Statute of Catalan Autonomy and the Spanish Constitution.”
It also warns that no one is “above compliance with the laws” and therefore “we cannot admit that political representatives have privileges over those they represent, the citizens.” In this regard, they demand that political representatives who break the laws “be judged with all guarantees by an independent justice system and, if it is proven that they have broken the laws, be condemned” unambiguous reference to those convicted by 1-O .
The manifesto also refers to the necessary ideological neutrality of the Catalan institutions, “including schools, public media, professional associations and the autonomous government” and condemns the “accusations and attacks of journalists in the exercise of their work as informants in Catalonia »that have also been denounced by Reporters Without Borders and OSCE, The Representative on Freedom of the Media.
It also calls on the Government to “guarantee the rights and freedoms of its citizens and ensure the coexistence of Catalan citizens.” And it concludes by stating that if the “Democrats do not respect the rule of law and do not defend the mechanisms of functioning of representation, democracies will perish.”
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