The national spokesperson for the PP, Borja Sémper, has denounced that “there are reasons to be angry” in the face of a Government of Spain that “does not respect citizens and treats them like idiots,” and he has said that the PNV has turned into “a subordinate of sanchismo” and is “incapable of solving the problems of the Basques” and of “defending in Madrid nothing positive for Euskadi.”
Sémper intervened this Saturday at a campaign event in Barakaldo (Bizkaia), accompanied by the candidate for Bizkaia to the Congress of Deputies, Esther Martínez, the president of the Basque PP, Javier de Andrés, and the president of the PP of Vizcaya, Amaya Fernández.
During his speech, Borja Sémper launched an attack on the PNV’s “discourse of fear,” which warns of the “hypothetical rollback that Euskadi may experience if the Partido Popular governs” and of “the seven plagues that could fall on Euskadi if there is a change of government in Spain.”
In this context, he reproached the PNV for “talking to us about competencies but not about their incompetence in management,” and he warned the jeltzales that “enough is enough about playing with fear about pensions,” which “are guaranteed, as the PP has always done whenever it has had the chance to govern.”
“And not because the PP is a particularly generous party, but because it is the contributors with their generosity who have contributed to our society and the minimum that any responsible person must demand—or that any political responsible person must ensure—is that those pensions be seen as guaranteed,” he emphasized.
He added that the PP commits to ensuring “not only the pensions of today’s pensioners, but also that the youngest can have the opportunity to have a decent public pensions system” and “up to” its “professional effort.”
At the same time, he described national politics and “power” as “truly unbearable,” referring to the Executive of Pedro Sánchez, which “talks to us about the problems of power instead of talking about the problems of the citizens and which has diluted the importance of separating truth from lies,” because “everything is staged in a continuous farce so as not to talk about the real problems of the citizens and so as not to account for their inability to manage.”
In this sense, he has reiterated that "there are reasons to be angry" and has defended that "the change is necessary". "We need for politics to talk again about the real needs of citizens," he said, to underscore that the PP, "in addition to having a concrete project to solve citizens' problems," has at the helm "someone who knows how to govern, Alberto Núñez Feijóo".
As he indicated, the PP's proposal is for Spain "to work again, to have a president of the government who governs for everyone, for those who voted for him and for those who did not, and to have ministers who are in charge of exercising their competences".
He has insisted that the country "needs very good management", but also "to recover its prestige in the exercise of politics", and he has again accused the current Government of that it "does not respect citizens and treats them like idiots".
Sémper assured that "welcome" those who decide to support the PP because "there are a lot of people angry about how the sanchismo has done it badly" and he specified that they also aspire to the support of "people with hope" since "we are not going to govern to take revenge on anyone", but rather "we want to look to the future and call on the citizens, the Basques, and the entire group of Spaniards, to a common and shared project for the country".
After denouncing "the unbearable corruption that has colonized and that has stained public debate in Spain over these last years", he pointed out that "there is a lot of Socialist people who today look for an exit and we offer it to them".
Likewise, he has asked for the support of "all those who in the past trusted the PNV, thinking that it was the party that could bring the best for Euskadi" but who today realize that it has become "a subordinate of sanchismo" and a formation "incapable of responding to the material problems that Basques have and of defending nothing positive for Euskadi in Madrid".
Therefore, Borja Sémper has called for "an opportunity to change the direction of the country and of Spanish politics and to help Spain do better and work again".
Reformist project of the PP
For her part, Esther Martínez has claimed the "great reformist project" she presents to the PP "open to everyone, because above and beyond the disagreement that there may be in politics, there always has to be room for agreement".
Martínez, who has reiterated the Popular Party’s commitment to “immediately” “expel” immigrants who “come to commit crimes,” has said that in Euskadi the “PNV-PSOE tandem has a broken compass” and that the PNV “has been left to serve as the excuse for all the misdeeds that Sánchez has put forward and that also affect us” in Euskadi.
“Who has seen and who sees now the PNV, from being Sánchez’s sack-carriers, who arrived by raising a wall to fracture Spanish society,” he criticized, adding that “that wall, with which they try to hide all the corruption of the PSOE Government, is the one we have to tear down next day 29” in order “to build a better future for everyone.”
The candidate emphasized that “no one is going to manage the interests of everyone better than Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who has dedicated his life to public service, and it is that public servant who doesn’t come to serve himself from Spain but to serve Spain.”
The president of the Basque PP, Javier de Andrés, has argued that the PNV is “a hostage partner” of the PSOE and that, despite the fact that “it has always wanted to make people believe that it was a flexible party, that it makes deals with the left and with the right, that it gets along with everyone,” when it has governed in a minority “it has always made deals with the left” and “it has always given power to the Socialist Party.”
He has stressed that the PNV, “with whom it always gets along is with the left” and that “today everyone already knows, in the Basque Country, that if you vote for the PNV you are voting for Sánchez; there are no doubts.” In addition, he has criticized that the PNV “always puts ideological criteria above public service” and acts as “a containment block, because it has been measured within the wall that it has built together with Pedro Sánchez.”
He has also said that “Bildu and the PNV are intermediaries” of the PSOE because their votes “go to Pedro Sánchez,” which, in his view, “leaves all the space for the center-right in favor of the PP, for all those who believe that there needs to be a serious security policy against criminals, a real housing policy that isn’t distributing misery, healthcare that is designed from public service and not from ideology, and taxation that encourages investment and the generation of wealth.”
Criticisms of the “dirty game” with pensioners
Finally, Amaya Fernández has stated that, from the electoral campaign, she is especially concerned about "dirty tricks to put pensioners, who receive a pension, in the electoral political battle," when "at this time, what retirees and pensioners are expecting from all of us is that we give them peace of mind, security, and a decent pension to those who have spent their entire lives working".
In this line, she has accused the Partido Socialista of "trying to sow uncertainty in the hearts of the retirees and pensioners of Euskadi," has called for "taking pensioners out of the political game," and has highlighted the commitment of the Popular Party candidate, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with "a public pension system that is viable in the future".
Fernández has appealed to getting the "patriotic pride" on 29 November and has assured that the PP is "the only useful vote" and that "there are no intermediate paths for the change that is necessary to be possible".