Regretful. This is how the candidate says he feels EH Bildu, Otxandiano Hair, who three days before the elections has regretted the long journey that his words have had about ETA, which he described as an “armed group.” Far from entering the debate again, the Abertzale leader has tried to clear the air and not go into evaluating the terrorist group, limiting himself to pointing out that he should have left that issue “outside the electoral context.”
It has been the controversy generated by those words that have caused the supposed rectification and repentance of Otxandiano, who this Thursday asked for forgiveness from the victims in two interviews on Radio Euskadi and Telebilbao. “If with my words I could hurt the sensitivity of ETA victims“I apologize,” said the candidate for Lehendakari, but he did so with his chest out for his training. Because Otxandiano has insisted that EH Bildu has taken steps, even if they are “insufficient” and from April 22 (after the elections) “it will continue giving them.”
And, ultimately, what the Abertzale leader seems to have regretted is having put the terrorist group in the media spotlight. “There is a pattern that repeats itself. Every time we approach an important political moment, ETA gains relevance in the public conversation“said Otxandiano, the only person responsible for the controversy generated in recent days and who is now trying to put his foot down. The same man, furthermore, who now demands “discretion” and assures that he is working with the victims, but “out from the media spotlight and above all, outside of electoral interests”.
The past of EH Bildu
The Abertzale candidate for Lehendakari takes the polls into account, no matter how much he says that we must be cautious. And he presents his formation as the only one capable of uniting all sensitivities: “One of the political traditions that today belongs to EH Bildu was an agent of pain in the past. Later it was part of the solution and today I think it is ready to be reconciliation agent. Proof of this is that on my lists there are people threatened by ETA back in the day.”
Finally, the EH Bildu candidate has stressed his “absolute respect and closeness” to the “pain of all the victims and especially the victims of ETA”, while insisting that the path of reparation cannot be unilateral. .
Last Tuesday, Otxandiano lit the fuse of the controversy by refusing to classify ETA as a terrorist group. Far from it, He clarified that it is “an armed group” about which “various considerations” can be had. The candidate for Lehendakari insisted that “we can discuss the considerations of what is terrorism and what is not,” and to argue this he made reference to “the different points of view of what the GAL or state violence have meant.” . Some words that generated great controversy among the associations of victims of the terrorist group.