Pamplona (EFE).- The gesture of Contigo-Zurekin to admit and encourage Geroa Bai to hold a bilateral meeting with the PSN before the “three-way” negotiation could unblock the obstacle that the Socialists have encountered for a week to advance in a possible pact that the Government of Navarra reissues with the support of the three formations. Geroa Bai has welcomed the news “with satisfaction”.
New “sit-in” of Geroa Bai on PSN and Contigo-Zurekin
This Wednesday again Geroa Bai has again left PSN and Contigo-Zurekin planted in the three-way meeting to which he had been summoned to advance an agreement. For the second time in a week, Geroa Bai has given up participating in the meeting until the Socialists clarify to them in a bilateral meeting the weight of each formation in that possible distribution.
After the meeting between PSN and Contigo Zurekin, which lasted more than an hour, the spokespersons for both parties have confirmed the “gesture” of Contigo to grant the possibility of having a meeting without them. However, they have warned that in no case will it be to agree on anything without their presence.
For this reason, the PSN will get in touch with Geroa Bai to maintain this bilateral appointment, before next Monday afternoon, and the three formations meet to start the joint negotiation.
This has been told to journalists by Ramón Alzórriz, who from now on will direct the negotiation commissioned by the PSN general secretary, María Chivite -absent at the meeting-, who has confirmed that she will call Geroa Bai “to talk, to negotiate, but in no case to agree, because in that agreement there must be the 21 votes” of socialists, Geroa Bai and Contigo Zurekin, to whom he has asked for “height of vision”.
PSN does not want to “humiliate” but reflect the votes
Thus, he has denied that the PSN intends to “humiliate or weaken any political formation,” he said in response to Geroa Bai’s complaints about the treatment of the Socialists. For Alzorriz, these joint meetings are intended to “endorse and reflect what the citizens of Navarre have voted for. And if certain parties have been weakened or strengthened, it is not any other political party, but the Navarra citizenry” that has done it.
For this reason, he has insisted that a possible agreement needs the 21 votes of PSN, Geroa Bai and Contigo-Zurekin. They are the ones who “constitute the alternative to the right and those who must participate in the negotiations and agreements for this to be possible”, he said after showing his “maximum respect” to the 3 votes of the least represented coalition .
He has also pointed out the image that is given with these disagreements and in which it seems that “we are negotiating for positions, when we are negotiating for management.” He hoped that in the next bilateral meeting between PSN and Geroa Bai there would be “a sincere dialogue between two formations that have already shared a government and that want to share another one again, and that it be possible for there to be a tripartite meeting that advances in the future Government of Navarre”.
Yes, he has recognized that, with the distribution that the polls have given (11 seats for PSN, 7 for Geroa Bai -who loses 2 with respect to the previous elections- and 3 for Contigo), the socialists “have said that we wanted certain institutional positions because We understood that the Navarra citizenship had given us more strength within that space that makes up the progressive government”. He has added that the PSN also “has ceded the presidency of Parliament” to Geroa Bai “to generate a climate of trust and a future for these negotiations.”
Regarding the meeting with Contigo-Zurekin, Alzórriz has confirmed it as “very positive”. In it, issues such as “shielding rights against the advance of the rights” in areas of health, housing or acquired social rights, and even the “denialism of the rights in the face of climate change” have been discussed.
Contigo-Zurekin: Before who you have to talk about what
On behalf of Contigo-Zurekin, Begoña Alfaro agreed to define the meeting as “very productive” because they talked about “the program”, although she did not ignore her “disappointment” at the new absence of Geroa Bai. She has warned that in this type of negotiation “first you have to talk about what, then how and, ultimately, who” she has said about institutional positions.
In any case, Alfaro has offered a “concession” of his training to favor the unblocking of the positions. He has stated that “we are not going to hinder the occurrence of this bilateral meeting that is being systematically demanded” by Geroa Bai and that any progress has been “paralyzed”.
“Of course, and we want to make it crystal clear, it will be a bilateral meeting in which no decision should be made regarding institutional representation, the formation of the Government,” he said. That way, if something like this happened without Contigo-Zurekin, his three votes wouldn’t back any vote.
Geroa Bai, “satisfied” because PSN “redirects” its position
For his part, Geroa Bai has shown his “satisfaction” after learning of the PSN’s intention to “redirect its position and fulfill the commitment” adopted with them.
After learning of the announcement that PSN, with the connivance of Contigo-Zurekin, will propose that meeting to Geroa Bai, this formation has published a note in which it shows its “firm and determined commitment to dialogue and negotiation between different parties for the achievement of progressive and plural governments”, as he says he has been demonstrating since 2015.