The PNV does not trust Pedro Sánchez. And Bildu does not believe the official message from the socialist candidate, Eneko Andueza, that his party will never transfer the Navarra model to Euskadi, where socialists and Bildu have exchanged stickers between the Government of the regional community and the Mayor's Office of Pamplona. Everything is a shell game in a campaign that officially begins on Friday, and for which the nationalist left is already fully mobilized with events in which more Navarre flags than ever are seen, mixed with the Palestinian ones and also with those of Donbas. , a region in eastern Ukraine, bordering Russia and where Moscow has focused its attack on the Ukrainian invasion.
The politics of recent years, and especially that which is dominated by the unpredictable factor of Pedro Sánchez, has blown up all the patterns. And although the elections in Euskadi are approached from that mantra that assumes that there will be continuity of a PNV-PSE government, the reality is that the protagonists of the agreements are not so confident in private about what the reality that emerges from them may be. the polls.
There is no campaign climate, voters are demobilized and this plays against the PNV, which is betting heavily on the stability of its acronym and the predictability of its political and economic program. The entire Bildu network is very mobilized, and this is a factor that the Peneuvistas will have to fight against in the campaign. But there is also suspicion among the ranks of the PNV that Pedro Sánchez may be tempted to end up sealing an agreement with Bildu as soon as the results offer him the slightest possibility. And what can we say if it turns out that Bildu is ahead of the PNV in seats.
The national PSOE and the PSE, this one even more strongly, deny it, but it would not be the first time that a flat denial is later denied by the decisions made by the socialists once the polls are closed. “Bildu is only interested in ETA prisoners,” another mantra also installed as if it were the only principle by which Arnaldo Otegi's men are willing to sell their soul in this electoral contest. But the prisoners are now all in Euskadi. There are some left in France and those outside Europe, which will be around 150.
The important work has already been done, and what Bildu spokespersons are heard saying in private conversations is that their will, if they have the seats to do so, is to govern and not let the screen pass for the next opportunity. In the campaign, everything that has to do with possible post-electoral pacts is taboo because it can destroy the entire strategy if the wrong message reaches the electorate ahead of time.
It is not convenient for the socialists to circulate this idea of the pact with Bildu, Navarra-style, in what would be a perfect squaring of the circle within the “map” with which they work in Moncloa. That alliance of leftists and independentists that isolates the peripheral and central right and facilitates governability in Madrid.
Logically, the first thing would be to think that this scenario would leave Pedro Sánchez without the support of the PNV in Madrid. But they also have an answer for this because the idea can always pass through the head of the president and his team that those of the PNV, even if they lost Ajuria Enea, would have to be silent if progress continues in the transfers negotiated with them, although the So don't put it on your credit but let it go to Otegi's credit. And since Vox is the “demon”, the possibility of a motion of censure is flatly ruled out. The PNV candidate, Imanol Pradales, has started the campaign by warning about what is hidden behind Bildu's aesthetic operation, that Sortu-Otegi is in charge, and that there is a hidden agenda beneath social and progressive policies.
The campaign will be final and nothing can be taken for granted. As a senior PNV official says, “you never know what can happen with Sánchez. And there are always reasons to doubt his word. Navarra is a precedent that makes these doubts more than justified, and even more so if it is linked to the Catalan elections and Sánchez's need to forge alliances with ERC, if there is not a pro-independence majority, so that from a position of weakness Of the Republicans, they promoted Salvador Illa to the Presidency of the Generalitat. For Sánchez, life is easier with partners who are all ideologically left-wing, although pro-independence, than through Junts or PNV, who have, for example, vetoed the agenda of the vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz.
The results of the CIS survey have been received with great skepticism in Euskadi. The barometer of the socialist Tezanos predicts a victory for the PNV in the Basque elections with a narrow margin over EH Bildu. The party led by Pradales would achieve between 30 and 31 seats compared to 28-29 for the nationalist left. The PSE and the PP would repeat the results obtained, while the big losers would be Sumar and Elkarrekin Podemos, who are running separately and could be left out of the Chamber. Your vote is absorbed by Bildu. The only seat that Bildu won four years ago is also in danger. In the Basque Parliament, the absolute majority is 38 seats, so the results produced by this CIS leave open the option that governance continues in the hands of PNV-PSE, but also gives the option of a Bildu-PSE agreement. And they already say it in the PNV, “nothing should be taken for granted with Sánchez.”