Socialists defend this mechanism in the face of the antagonistic positions from which they start
PSOE and Junts will meet in Geneva (Switzerland), in the first meeting between both parties after they closed an agreement for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and an organization will act as an international verifier, according to socialist sources. Although the initial intention was for the meeting to take place this week and begin talks in November, it will finally take place later.
The PSOE defends establishing this verification mechanism because both parties start from completely antagonistic positions, as they point out, because Junts wants a self-determination referendum while the socialists are committed to developing the Catalan Statute of Autonomy of 2006.
The PSOE delegation will be led by the Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, according to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, during his trip to Israel and Palestine in an informal conversation with journalists. The ‘number three’ of the PSOE was already in charge of the negotiation with Junts and went to Brussels for several days to definitively close the pact.
In the aforementioned conversation with the media, Sánchez also defended that the inclusion of a verification mechanism in the dialogue with Junts can be helpful given the “mistrust” that exists between this party and the PSOE. The socialist sources consulted suggest that this role will not be carried out by a person “with names and surnames” but by an organization that is dedicated to carrying out this type of mediation work.
The agreement signed by PSOE and Junts contemplates an international verification mechanism responsible for “accompanying, verifying and monitoring the entire negotiation process and the agreements reached between both parties.”
After the signing, Junts revealed that the meetings will take place outside of Spain, they will be held monthly and the former Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, who has been in Belgium for six years fleeing from Spanish justice, will participate.
The PSOE considers that holding these meetings represents significant progress with respect to the situation experienced until now with the post-convergents with whom there was practically no dialogue while now they are going to sit down and talk.
In any case, they advance that they will conduct these conversations with discretion and will communicate the agreements when they occur, but they do not plan to make public the minutes of each meeting. Nor do they move forward if they see possibilities of reaching agreements in the short term. Rather, they point to long-term conversations based on the points included in the text of the agreement.
LIKE A NOTARY
In a recent interview in El Diario reported by Europa Press, Cerdán already indicated that he saw the figure of the international verifier “as a notary” whose function will be to record the agreements and verify that they are fulfilled.
He was also in favor of not making public the identity of the people who are part of this mechanism, to protect them, as he indicated, and because those who do this type of work usually remain anonymous, as he defended. “The important thing is not who it is going to be. The important thing will be the agreements, which will always be public, and what the political forces propose,” he indicated.
