Puigdemont does not rule out fresh elections in Catalonia
BARCELONA: Catalonia’s deposed leader Carles Puigdemont did not rule out fresh elections in the Spanish region if the jailed candidate chosen by Catalan separatist parties to form a new government is not allowed to be sworn in.
“It is no tragedy if there are new elections, although it is not the priority and no one desires it,” he said in an interview published in Catalan nationalist newspaper El Punt Avui.
Puigdemont moved to Belgium after the Catalan parliament unilaterally declared independence on Oct 27 following a banned referendum on secession.
He faces arrest if he returns to Spain over his role in Catalonia’s separatist push.
As such he has no power to call elections himself, and he even formally abandoned his bid to be re-appointed Catalan president last week, proposing Jordi Sanchez as a candidate.
But Sanchez is considered to have little chance of taking up the post since he is remanded in custody pending accusations of sedition over last year’s Catalan independence crisis.
On Friday, Spain’s Supreme Court turned down his request to be released from jail to attend a crux parliamentary session on Monday where he was set to officially be appointed.
The region’s parliamentary speaker Roger Torrent said in a tweet later that the Monday’s appointment by the Catalan assembly had been ‘postponed’. — AFP