The president of the Generalitat and number 4 on the Junts pel Sí electoral list, Artur Mas, warned today that during the electoral campaign for the September 27 elections “there will be powers that will organise stunts to negatively influence the result of the election.” During an interview with Rac1, Mas recalled the attacks against him in the run-up to the 2012 elections, and the accusations against Xavier Trias during the local election campaign, predicting that “no doubt they will now also take advantage of the situation, because now come the most decisive elections.”
On the urgent reform of the Tribunal Constitucional that PP has put forward to be able to penalise him, the president was blunt: “It is an attempt to control the Catalan process,” and he added: “I am sure they think about me for more than an hour a day.” Moreover, he stated that what the Spanish government is trying to do is incapacitate him: “They want to suspend me, and that shows how nervous they are, and the extent to which they are willing to go.”
In relation to the raid on the headquarters of CDC and the CatDem foundation, and the accusations of corruption levelled at the party he leads, Mas insisted today that he is free of corruption and that he is not in charge of CDC finances, even though he said that “there are people in charge of the finances who I fully trust.” Mas stated that he does not know whether these searches, which are part of an investigation into the possible payment of irregular commission by Teyco to CDC, are part of an attack against the Catalan process, but he expressed the belief that the police operation last Friday “was widened” to create a “spectacle”, which make him “suspect other motives”.
Mas reiterated that he understands, from what Teyco itself has said, that the company not only made donations to CatDem but also to the foundations of other political parties, without saying which ones.
“González is a great disappointment”
Mas referred to the letter addressed to the Catalans that the former Spanish prime minister, Felipe González, published in ‘El País’ newspaper at the weekend: “It was a great disappointment,” he said, stating that “more than the comparison with Nazism and fascism, which is very serious, I think that what says it all is this: when a socialist democrat who inspired so much renewal comes and tells us that it does not matter how we vote, you ask yourself: ‘Who do you take us for? Are we subjects’?”
