Jon Aristu
Pamplona (EFE).- Javier Esparza (Pamplona, 1970) is the UPN candidate for the presidency of Navarra, and after the breakup of the Navarra Suma coalition, with PP and Ciudadanos, he accuses the PP of “playing to weaken everything that can to UPN” and explains that the difference with the popular ones is that he is concerned about “presiding over Navarra”.
Esparza expresses himself like this, in an interview with EFE, about the signing of positions and ex-charges of his party by the popular for the elections of May 28, in which he considers that he will obtain a great result that will allow him to govern alone predicting a different distribution of forces between the current members of the Executive chaired by María Chivite (PSN).
Q.- What is your goal in these elections?
A.- Win the elections and govern Navarra.
Q.- What are your accounts?
A.- We are going to be the first force and we are going to win the elections. I have no doubt about that. We have been winning the elections for the last 30 years, we are going to do it much differently from the second political force and, from then on, I hope to be able to unite around UPN a sufficient number of votes to be a government alternative because the only alternative is the Union of the Navarro People.
Q.- For this equation to have this result, the PSN has to give up forming a government with its current partners.
A.- What I am saying is that in many places the party with the most votes governs, it also governs from a leadership that the citizens recognize at the polls and from there other political formations will have to see what they do.
We are a moderate, very transversal political party that has shown that when it has governed it has led Navarra to the best rates. This Government was born from a lie with those statements by Sánchez and Chivite saying “I am not going to agree with Bildu” and then agree with Bildu. There are many socialists who stop me on the street and tell me that they feel cheated and that they are going to vote for UPN with complete and absolute peace.
Q.- If the forces that were Navarra Suma four years ago do not achieve an absolute majority, they need those who agreed then not to do so again.
R.- And why are they going to agree? Do you have the guarantee and the certainty that they will agree? Because I don’t have it.
Q.- Do you think they are not going to agree?
R.- I see that what is going to be here is a Socialist Party that is going to have fewer parliamentarians than it has today, I see Geroa Bai with fewer parliamentarians than it has today and EH Bildu with more than it has today . The distribution of forces within that pentapartite is going to adjust in a different way and that means that everyone has to rethink their future.
And then there is a reality, María Chivite is clear that she wants to be president at any cost and will give Bildu the mayoralty of Pamplona, she will put them in the Government or the mayoralties that she wants, if Bildu demands it of her that she will demand, but Chivite does not decide and that is something that no one should forget.
Q.- Do you aspire to reach an agreement in Madrid that allows you to be president?
A.- I aspire to govern alone and I aspire to have sufficient support from thousands of Navarrese who believe that Navarra is not doing well and that it is losing the leadership it has always had.
Q.- Do you have the PP for your Government?
A.- I’m counting on governing alone. The PP voted no in the investiture of Yolanda Barcina, to situate things.
Q.- If you do not achieve an absolute majority, you will need others to at least allow your government even if they do not support it.
A.- Here there are two possibilities, either the PSN governs with Bildu or the UPN governs. And what UPN is saying is that it wants to govern alone and then reach agreements with others. We have shown that we have a waist, we have shown that we are capable of reaching agreements with other political formations.
We have formed Navarra Suma and we invented it from UPN, but this legislature we have reached agreements with the PSN or with Geroa Bai. Historically, UPN has been a government party that is capable of listening to others and reaching agreements, and that is what we are going to do in the future.
Q.- If Javier Esparza is not president after 28-M, will he step aside or will he spend 12 years in the opposition?
A.- Javier Esparza aspires to be president and to have the support of the people of Navarre and it is in this scenario that he is working. He does not consider any other possibility.
Q.- Don’t you think about what can happen if you are not president?
R.- No, because I really believe that people are fed up with this pentapartite and the previous quadripartite, with governments that cost us more, but that do not solve the problems of the Navarrese.
These elections, which some are determined to hold a Feijóo-Sánchez plebiscite, are about Navarra, about what happens in Navarra, about the taxes we pay in Navarra, about Education, Health or Employment in Navarra.
Q.- How is the flight of charges and ex-charges to the PP being lived in your party?
A.- Here we all know each other, little more than talking. We are going to be the first force by far, the PP is a minority party in this land and it will continue to be.
Q.- Do you not consider that it will be reflected in the elections?
A.- What we are clear about is that by going separately, the center right gets more votes and that is the explanation of all this. We did an analysis of all this and we know that by going to UPN separately, people vote for him who would not vote for him if they were with the PP. UPN is the benchmark for the center right in Navarra.
The PP does not aspire to govern Navarra, it aspires to weaken UPN as much as possible, that is what it is playing, to damage UPN as much as possible, the problem with this is that what it does with its attitude is to strengthen María Chivite and EH Bildu. But they don’t care either because his interest is in Madrid, Feijóo what happens in Navarra… he is concerned about being president of Spain, it is legitimate. I am concerned about presiding over this community, that is the difference between UPN and PP.