News / EU

Catalan regional leader says ready to call fresh parliamentary elections

Tuesday, 05 January 2016 4:53 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 05 January 2016 4:54 PM ]

Catalonia's regional leader Artur Mas (AFP Photo)

Catalan regional leader Artur Mas says he is ready ‘against his will’ to call fresh parliamentary elections in Catalonia as the January 10 deadline to form a new government comes close to its end.

“I’m ready - against my will, this is not what we wanted and it is not what I want - but I’m ready to sign the decree to convene elections,” he told reporters in Barcelona on Tuesday.

The announcement comes after groups within Catalonia's pro-separation camp, which won the September polls, failed to agree on who should lead the new government.

Mas' ruling conservative Convergence party and the Republican Left of Catalonia group joined forces under the "Together for Yes" alliance to win 62 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament last September.

However, the re-election of incumbent Mas needed the support of the far-left CUP, a pro-Catalan independence political party, to secure a workable majority and further push the independence effort. The party, however, did not swing its ten seats in favor of Mas.

The CUP had been an unlikely partner for Mas from the beginning and had long rejected his candidacy because of his government's austerity policies and his party's links to corruption scandals.

The CUP on Monday, however, said that "Together for Yes" could still propose another candidate and receive the party's backing.

"We haven't got many days left, a week's margin for a move, if desired, to avoid elections," CUP deputy leader Anna Gabriel told Catalunya Radio.

The pro-independence alliance has so far offered its full support for Mas.

Polls show that most Catalans support a referendum on independence, but are divided over breaking from Spain. The Spanish government has ruled out the possibility of a split.

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