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The judicial course starts weighed down by the most tense political battle

2021-09-06T03:48:41.794Z


Lesmes will warn the King that the partisan pulse affects judicial independence The opening ceremony of the judicial course, which will take place this Monday at the headquarters of the Supreme Court presided over by the King, will be the most tense in recent years, because it will be the fourth time that it will be held with the expectation of a mandatory renewal of the governing body of the judges that, in reality, is still blocked. The disagreement between PSOE and PP –the


The opening ceremony of the judicial course, which will take place this Monday at the headquarters of the Supreme Court presided over by the King, will be the most tense in recent years, because it will be the fourth time that it will be held with the expectation of a mandatory renewal of the governing body of the judges that, in reality, is still blocked.

The disagreement between PSOE and PP –the two essential forces for the agreement– has only worsened in recent days, and has spread to the representative organizations of the judiciary themselves.

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The judicial course begins, thus, with justice turned into a political battlefield, under the umbrella of a General Council of Power with a mandate expired since December 2018. Meanwhile, in the Supreme Court, the Constitutional Court, the Court of Accounts and the Hearing Nacional - apart from the investigation on the king emeritus - high voltage issues accumulate, whose progress and resolution will mark the evolution of the country's political life. All this under the gaze of some European institutions to which concern about this institutional deterioration has been transferred.

Against this background, the president of the Council of the Judiciary, Carlos Lesmes, is going to take another step in his denunciation of the situation, to warn in his opening speech of the judicial year before Felipe VI that what is at stake is not the The result of the political pulse maintained by socialists and popular people, but rather the independence of justice itself.

Of course, there is no indication that admonitions of this type will open a breach in the wall that separates the PSOE and PP, with opposing views on how to better guarantee said independence and the representativeness of the governing body of the judges.

Old differences

The political conflict is not only a question of criteria, but also of strategies. The differences on how to elect the members of the Judiciary arose from the very beginning of the institution. The reform to center this process in Parliament was promoted by the PSOE to facilitate its coherence with the parliamentary majorities of each moment. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, has now alluded to that reason. The Constitutional Court endorsed the appointment of said members by the Cortes, although it warned of the risks of politicization that it entailed. Since then, none of the successive modifications on the access routes to the Council has pacified the debate on the most suitable formula for its composition.

The differential factor is now that the new judicial year opens without bridges between the Government and the PP, after the popular leadership has affirmed that Bolaños is no longer "a valid interlocutor" to negotiate when the minister maintains that "it is not possible make watertight compartments with the powers of the State ”and that“ judges cannot elect judges ”.

Bolaños' demonstrations have to do with the fact that the Council is not only in charge of governing the judiciary, but also has other functions, for example in the legislative sphere, by preparing reports on bills that affect the exercise of fundamental rights.

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From the beginning of this legislature it was clear that justice was situated as a terrain of political confrontation. It is also the case that most of these institutions have their mandate expired, which implies that they maintain the conservative majority of agreements reached in a previous phase, in which the PP was the party in government and enjoyed of parliamentary majority. That panorama changed three years ago.

This situation is observed with special clarity in the Constitutional, which in July declared unconstitutional the confinement approved with the first decree of the state of alarm. Shortly, the court of guarantees will address the debate of another Vox appeal, presented against the second state of alarm, and in view of what happened with the first and the doctrine established with the previous ruling, it is likely that the new sentence represents a new setback for the Government.

The magistrate in charge of drafting the draft of this second resolution is Antonio Narváez, from the conservative bloc, who in the previous case supported the sentence proposed by the also magistrate from the same sector Pedro González-Trevijano. Said ruling considered that the Government's measures against the pandemic supposed a suppression - and not a mere limitation - of fundamental rights, for which the state of alarm should not have been decreed, but rather asked the Courts to declare a state of exception.

In the coming months, the Constitutional Court must also issue a sentence on the permanent reviewable prison and on the educational reform embodied in the Celaá law.

It is also possible that it addresses the appeal against the abortion law, as well as the challenge to the oath of the deputies and the validity of the additions and various formulas used to access the position, in the constitutive plenary session of the Cortes.

What is at stake in this matter is the very composition of the Congress and the Senate, because the consequence that the terms used by some parliamentarians were considered illegal and annulled could be that it was considered that the oath or promise process had not been fulfilled. correctly and that they had not validly acceded to the position of deputies or senators.

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  • The PP blows up the bridges for the renewal of the Judicial Power

Also of special interest is the ruling that the Constitutional Court must issue on the legal amendment that eliminated the jurisdiction of the Council of the Judiciary to make appointments while it remains in office.

If the court considers that this reform was unconstitutional, the Council will recover its capacity to fill the vacancies that are becoming vacant in the jurisdictional bodies, such as those of the Supreme Court magistrates or those of the presidents of the Superior Courts of Justice.

This circumstance would suppose another setback for the Government, that promoted that cut of competitions.

The prospect of achieving this may encourage the PP to maintain the current blockade so that the Constitutional Party does not change its composition and with it its conservative majority.

The vacancies of the Supreme

In parallel, there are now 11 vacancies in the Supreme Court, six of them in the Contentious-Administrative Chamber. Only the Criminal Chamber has the full staff. In each of the other four Chambers there is at least one vacancy. Eight magistrates will be absent in the Litigation Department next April, because in the coming months there will be two retirements.

This Chamber resolves all appeals in tax matters, for example, and is now essential in relation to challenges on measures to control the covid-19 pandemic. It also has to decide on the appeals against the pardons granted to the independence leaders convicted by the

procés

and on the challenges against the appointment of the former Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, as State Attorney General. The situation of this Chamber is, therefore, particularly serious, and it could be the case that some of its five sections could not meet due to lack of magistrates to deliberate and pass judgment.

The Court of Accounts - which also has jurisdictional functions, apart from administrative ones - ended its mandate in July. Among the most outstanding pending proceedings is the case against 34 former senior officials and officials of the Generalitat on irregular expenses to promote the

process

abroad. The first pending decision on this matter will be the admission or not of the guarantees provided by the Generalitat to face the insurance of the 5.4 million euros that are claimed from the investigated. It must also rule on the presumed accounting responsibility of UGT in the case of the ERE - a matter for which union assets worth 9.7 million euros have been seized - and on the Executive's aid to the airline Plus Ultra .

Multiple cases on economic crimes and corruption accumulate in the National High Court.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-09-06

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