Uxue Barkos will once again be Geroa Bai’s candidate for the Presidency of the Government of Navarra while the regional senator, Koldo Martínez, will head the coalition list for Pamplona City Council.
The candidacies have been announced this Sunday in a political act that Geroa Bai has held at the hotel Tres Reyes in Pamplona and that has been attended by public officials from the coalition such as the president from the Parliament of Navarra, Unai Hualde, the second vice-president of the regional government, José Mª Aierdi, the Minister of Economic and Business Development, Mikel Irujo, the Minister of Citizen Relations, Ana Ollo, as well as parliamentarians and councilors from the formation.
Uxue Barkos has warned that “without a progressive and plural majority we are very close to losing the change we achieved in 2015” because “we are very close to losing everything we have achieved around public services , the recognition of plurality, what has been built during all these years”. A change that has been maintained “wherever Geroa Bai has managed to keep the pulse in the institutions”, she has asserted.
Barkos has opted for a “more prosperous, egalitarian” Navarra as a “political subject and not as an object on the scene of other interests”, whose “fate” is decided by “our work, that of the women and men of our society, the objectives that we set ourselves as the best for our land and the next generations”.
He criticized the fact that “today Navarra continues to be the basket of right-wing confrontations” that, “when it has been unable to bring about dialogue and agreement within Navarre society, it has not been ashamed when trying in Moncloa, Genoa or Ferraz what they were not able to achieve here”. “UPN can’t keep fooling around with this anymore,” she remarked.
Nor, he added, those who “in Madrid attack the legitimacy of their institutions seeking the easy applause of Vox”, nor those who “put Moncloa’s strategy before the interests of the Navarrese”. “The PSN has left a clear sign of its submission to the dictates of Moncloa and Ferraz”, he has criticized. In this sense, he has pointed out that, in 2019, when the PSN was negotiating with Geroa Bai for a “progressive government”, it was “unable to sit down and talk about the city councils of Pamplona and Comarca” and “gave away” city halls such as Pamplona, Egüés or Estella to UPN.
The candidate has warned that the welfare state has “an important Achilles heel” in public health, which “we must reinforce through political action” such as the one that Geroa Bai “developed without lukewarmness the last legislature”. In this regard, he has highlighted that the coalition reached the Executive with 50,000 personalities on the waiting list, “and after a strike by a medical union”, it was at 33,000 And he has valued the work of the former Minister of Health, Fernando Domínguez.
Also from José Mª Aierdi, who “has maintained over eight years” policies of access to housing for young people and in rural areas. Likewise, he has valued the management of the former Ministers of Education María Solana and José Luis Mendoza, “reinforcing” the public education network and its adjacent services with a model “wherever families request it” and which is now done with “certain stinginess”.
Barkos has stressed that “we must show solidarity to the younger generations and the environment” for which the Climate Change Law “which has been promoted” by the counselor Itziar Gómez was necessary. In the same way, he has criticized that the bill for the creation of the Energy Transition Agency is “parked” by the PSN “because for the moment the Madrid strategy requests that Navarra stop the charging speed in this matter” the Agency of Energy Transition.
It has valued the work in terms of historical memory after “decades of silence” and “without due recognition to the victims of ETA”, at the same time that it has criticized the “stones in the way” in the “recognition of the Basque language”
Koldo Martínez, candidate in Pamplona
For his part, the candidate for the Pamplona Mayor’s Office, Koldo Martínez, has shown himself “happy, blissful and grateful for the trust you are placing in me” because “only with confidence is how we can, with hope, humility and ambition, make a better Iruña”.
He has promised to be a “good mayor” before the attendees and the citizens of Pamplona. In this sense, he has rejected “the perverse polarization that corrupts everything” and has vindicated “peace and the word. I do not want a reñidero in Iruña at all.” “We are developing a city project integrated into a region program, a program for the regional metropolis, for Iruña and its region”, he has underlined.
In his speech, he expressed his appreciation to those who over the years have led the Pamplona City Council, to those mayors and councilors who “managed to circumvent the obstacles of Francoism” among them Javier Erice, “good mayor and good doctor” and, especially, Tomás Caballero, “vilely murdered by ETA”. He also recalled Julián Balduz “the architect of the modernization of Pamplona” and that he became mayor, being third party, “because he supported Herri Batasuna and the PNV.” And he has criticized that the “PSN only joins with the rest of the progressive forces if it is to command them.”
A recognition that has been extended to all the mayors of Pamplona, including Enrique Maya, for their “devotion to the city” even though they are “in overall opposition to the form of government they have developed” . He also recalled that in 2015 “we promoted Joseba Asiron to the mayor’s office”, from whom “we suffered some disloyalties”. “We can share agreements in many areas but we have a different model from Iruña”, he remarked.
The candidate has defended that the “alternative to the right” in Pamplona goes through Geroa Bai, because where the coalition is strong “it shows in the way of governing and it is better managed, management is done transformative and does not command sectarianism”. He has assured that “Pamplona is much more progressive than what the right thinks and much more Basque than the PSN would like”. Despite this, “in Iruña the right governs because Geroa Bai did not get the necessary result in the elections, because despite the change initiated in 2015, the PSN continues to be excessively tied to its history of flirting with the right.” And he has criticized that for the PSN the City Council is “an instrument for other purposes” unless the coalition has “excellent local representation.”
In this regard, he recalled the embarrassing spectacle in the vote on the labor reform”, with an agreement between the PSOE and UPN, and “the chill that the corralito foral and Navarra of the little cheese”. The City Council “has been a bargaining chip for a Moncloa and Ferraz strategy and “it will continue to be so if Geroa Bai is not strong in the Iruña City Council”, he insisted.
Thus, he highlighted that “to those who think that only they are entitled to govern” and “proclaim themselves as the only left”, in Geroa Bai “we affirm that there is another way of doing politics and the city , with coherence between what we think and say, with integrity”. “Faced with those who defend making decisions from extremes, at Geroa Bai we promote ethical management that leads us to make decisions that seek to make the maximum possible number of values of the maximum number of personalities in our society a reality”, he expressed.
Martínez has highlighted that there are “candidates who are distributing the bear’s skin before hunting it” and “it seems to be a great concern to know whether or not these personalities are going to continue in the city council.” In this sense, he has announced that he will make his freight compatible as an autonomous senator until the Provincial Parliament appoints the next one. “No matter what happens on the 28th, I am going to continue for four years in the City Council,” he remarked.
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