Basque Country as a Whole

I found this note at Google today, I need to find out more about this initiative, looks interesting:

Call to present list for whole of Basque Country in European elections

A group of citizens has “undertaken” to put forward a proposal to reflect the whole of the Basque Country in the June 13 elections; it will be debated on April 24 in an open assembly at the Miramar Palace in Donostia (San Sebastian)

Eider Goenaga – DONOSTIA (San Sebastian)

In Donostia yesterday a group of citizens put forward a proposal for the coming European elections to present a national electoral list that will take the whole of the Basque Country into consideration. “On June 13 all of us Basque citizens throughout the Basque Country and on the same day will for the first time have a historic opportunity to vote in Europe,” explained Robert Arranbide, the former elected representative of Hendaia (Hendaye), on behalf of the promoters of the initiative. He felt it would be “inexcusable and a great pity” to miss this chance to stand as a country before Europe: “They won’t be national elections, as we would have liked, but we will all be voting together on the same day in a national way and we regard this as indispensable to demonstrate the reality to Europe in the clearest of terms.”

The group of well-known and less well-known faces met together in the press conference to announce the initiative: Mikel Alzuart, Candido Esoain, Sabino Cuadra, Robert Arranbide, Sonia Gonzalez, Walter Wendellin, Xabier Silveira and Ane Agirregomezkorta. “If we leave political differences aside, what unites us is the fact that we are Basque citizens; we come from different parts of the Basque Country divided by frontiers we neither recognise nor accept; we do not represent anyone, nor do we wish to do so,” they said by way of defining themselves.

The people who had gathered for yesterday’s press conference not only proposed and sought a way for the whole of the Basque Country to be taken into consideration, they also proclaimed the right of “all citizens” to take part in the European elections. “They are European elections and all of us, the citizens of the oldest country in Europe, have the right to participate in the elections and, in particular, the obligation to be present, because this new European Union they are building could condition the future of the Basque Country.”

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