De Andrés says that the PP will listen to Pradales with “good will”, but insists on the need for change in Euskadi
The general secretary of the Basque PP, Javier de Andrés, has assured that they will go this Friday to the meeting with the lehendakari, Imanol Pradales, with ‘willingness to listen’, but defending the need for a change in Euskadi because PNV and PSE-EE ‘cannot continue to pursue the same policy that does not lead us in the right direction’.
In an interview with Radio Popular – Herri Irratia, reported by Europa Press, Javier de Andrés referred to the round of contacts that the Lehendakari will begin this Thursday with all the parties that have representation in the Basque Parliament except Vox.
The popular leader has said that they will bring ‘a good disposition to listen’ to Imanol Pradales and see ‘what do you want to propose to us’ and what ‘you would like to count on us for’.
After stressing that the PP’s will is to ‘logically defend the ideas and the project of the Popular Party and Of the 100,000 Basques who voted for us in these regional elections’has said that they will seek to ‘try to influence things to go in the direction that we have defended in the electoral campaign’.
‘We know that there is an absolute majority of PNV and PSE, but we, to the extent that we can, will be able to support, or failing that, if we do not agree with what is being done, then we will explain it,’ he said, to indicate that the new government must be given 100 days of confidence to see ‘what they are proposing’, while insisting that ‘a change is necessary in Euskadi, because the lines that have been taken in recent years lead us to a deterioration of public services and an increase in the cost for families and for workers of everything that is public service’.
He also highlighted a series of areas that ‘are not going well, they are going badly’, such as ‘housing, health, education and security’, which is why ‘we cannot continue’. doing the same thing that the PNV and PSOE governments that have existed until now have done.’ ‘A change is necessary and important and that is where we are going to pay attention to the first months of the Basque Government’s work to see if they really accept that they have to make some important decisions and not continue with the same policy because it does not lead us in the right direction,’ he warned.
In the specific case of health and the pact that the Lehendakari is seeking, Javier de Andrés has said that ‘the public service, in this case the health service, must be put before any ideological objective’. In his opinion, ‘the problem with Basque health is that it has a prioritisation of the PNV’s ideological objectives over the public service’ and ‘This is what has led, for example, to 50% of the Osakidetza staff being temporary.’
‘If we do not give a good response to these professionals, they will go to other places,’ he said, criticizing the PNV ‘prioritises elements that do not guarantee health, such as the Basque language, over health-related ones’.
In this regard, he has asked ‘how are they going to exponentially multiply the Osakidetza staff, as they have said, if they really cannot fill the positions that exist right now’ and has stressed that it is ‘not a question of money’, but of ‘political will’ to ‘provide the best public health service’.
Regarding housing, he said that the problem in the Basque Country is that there is ‘an effort to facilitate the construction of housing’ and that there is ‘a weight of the ideological question that, apparently, building housing is a bad thing’.
He has criticised the fact that there are ‘many burdens and difficulties for those who want to rent and for those who want to build’, which means that there will be ‘less rental and construction supply’, which means that ‘the price will go up’. For this reason, he has insisted on the need to ‘change the mentality’ and if ‘there is a demand for 103,000 homes, we cannot be building less than 3,000 a year’.
If we don’t see it that way, then we will be tempted, or there will be people who are tempted, to go against the law of strength in demand, and see who thinks they will be able to solve the problem of going against the law of strength in demand.
Regarding the controversy over tourist apartments and tense areas, Javier de Andrés has considered that in this matter there is ‘a socialist interpretation of the use of goods’ by which ‘the price is limited because it is expensive’, so that ‘intervening in the market and setting prices, what it does is discourage people from acquiring a home’ and that ‘leads to the rise in price’. ‘Housing is absolutely intervened and the more you intervene the worse it will be, because you will discourage and you will make people lose interest in construction, which is what is happening’, he reiterated.
MINOR IMMIGRANT
Regarding Vox’s threat to break the autonomous pacts if the Popular Party accepts the distribution of unaccompanied foreign minors, Javier de Andrés has asked what Santiago Abascal’s party intends to do ‘if it is not a distribution throughout Spain, if the minors are saturating the Canary Islands’. ‘What do we want, for them to stay in the Canary Islands and for the Canary Islands to take on this?’, he asked Vox, considering that this is ‘absurd’.
In his opinion, it is possible to ‘discuss how redistribution is done throughout the rest of Spain’, but, he insisted, ‘not having a redistribution makes no sense’. ‘What’s happening, that Vox thinks that the Canary Islands are not Spain?’, he asked, considering that redistribution is ‘natural’.
In his opinion, the problem is that ‘the Spanish government has not been able to stop the massive influx of immigrants, with certain risks and with the use of these people by mafias, which are the ones that move people between Africa and Spain, which is what needs to be stopped at the source’.
Regarding the Popular Party’s request to use the Armed Forces to contain the arrival of immigrants, Javier de Andrés has shown himself in favour ‘if it were necessary to stop the mother ships’ and has recalled that ‘the patrol boats are there to defend the borders’.
In any case, he insisted that ‘what we need to do is resolve this problem at its source’ and ‘not think that it is the Canary Islands, once things have been done wrong, that has to assume the massive influx of immigrants in perpetuity’.