Internal discomfort emerges in the Council of the Republicthe organization created by the ‘expresident’ Carles Puigdemont abroad and to which Puigdemont has recently limited the internal power of the bases – grouped in the Assembly of Representatives, as a pseudo-parliament – in favor of the management team. As ‘NacióDigital’ reports, around thirty members of this Assembly have complained by letter about the decision and the forms and have directly shot at the vice president of the Consell and Junts MEP, Toni Comin. Sources from the organization’s management accuse the rebels of not understanding how the organization works.
The discomfort has to do with the internal distribution of roles. In theory, the Consell has a ‘parliament’ made up of 121 people chosen from local assemblies and which had the functions of controlling the leadership, the ‘government’ of the organization, in a structure that recalls that of the legislative chambers regarding to executives. However, the Assembly meetings in recent months showed serious divergences with the Consell government. Some of the representatives, in their interventions, accused the leadership team of not listening to their proposals and of acting with dirigisme and lack of respect for their initiatives.
Faced with these evident discrepancies – the meetings are posted on the internet – the Consell leadership, with Puigdemont at the head, has decided to clearly cut the power of the Assembly, giving more weight to the local councils. The plan will be voted on in October and in practice responds to the growing discomfort that there was in the management of the entity with this part of the political artifact.
Now this tension has erupted publicly and the signatories of the letter openly criticize the forms and go so far as to affirm that “the presence and actions of Toni Comin, with a very fluctuating political trajectory (within some parties that are now Spanish) and motivated by the promotion of personal interests, put this vital project at risk. Every day that passes with him in a key position, we fear that the Consell project could be marked by distrust, despotism and even obsolescence.” The text goes so far as to affirm that Comín has benefited his environment economically with the management of some expenses. “We must ask ourselves if the suppliers benefiting from these representation expenses, event staging and multimedia technical equipment have not been a business channel for a small circle of people close to the vice president. Let us not forget that the money that the government receives and administers comes from the pockets of those registered with the Consell,” the signatories assert.
Comín has been in charge of managing the day-to-day running of the Consell and its government, always hand in hand with Puigdemont. Other members of the entity’s government, such as Teresa Vallverdú, they already transferred months ago to the bases of the ”parliament” that its powers had to change. That is, cut back.
Management’s response
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Sources from the Consell management minimize the impact of this letter of complaint, because it comes from officials who have already resigned and who do not understand, according to these sources, the functioning of the association because their mandate had expired.
Puigdemont created the Consell with the aim of uniting all pro-independence parties and entities around the strategy of enforcing the referendum of October 1, 2017 and maintaining the idea of the so-called “intelligent confrontation” with the State. However, the Consell has never brought together sectors such as ERC or Òmnium, which have kept their distance and have stressed that it is rather an organization at the service of the Junts per Catalunya strategy.