Justice forces Vox to reinstate the three expelled deputies who prevented the motion of censure in Murcia

The deputies expelled from Vox Juan José Liarte (on the right), Mabel Campuzano and Francisco Carrera, on January 13, 2022 before the start of the trial in Murcia. Marcial Guillén (EFE)

Vox will have to reinstate in its ranks the three deputies of the Regional Assembly of Murcia that it expelled from the party in June 2020, when it accused them of committing irregularities and serious infractions typified in the statutes of the formation. A judge has declared null and void the expulsion of the three politicians (Juan José Liarte, Mabel Campuzano and Francisco José Carrera), whose votes were key in March 2021 to prevent the motion of censure presented by PSOE and Ciudadanos against Fernando López Miras from advancing. who rewarded the gesture by naming Campuzano Minister of Education and Culture.

The expulsion of these three deputies had occurred almost a year earlier, when Liarte, Campuzano and Carrera decided to revoke the powers that they had signed to various national party leaders so that they would have access to the bank accounts of the parliamentary group, including the Santiago Abascal and his

Javier Ortega Smith. In addition, they fired four workers who also served in the parliamentary group and who had been hired by representatives from Madrid.

The Vox Guarantees Committee announced in May its intention to remove the three rebels from the game, and made it official on June 23, 2020. Since then and at all times, Liarte, Campuzano and Carrera have defended that the expulsion was made irregularly, without responding to the causes included in the statutes. They never left the Vox parliamentary group, in whose ranks the fourth of the party's deputies, Pascual Salvador, has been kept. He had voted against dismissals and withdrawing powers from the national leadership, despite the fact that months before, in December 2019, he was removed from the party's regional presidency and replaced by the former basketball player and Vox councilor in the capital Jose Angel Antelo.

The three expelled ended up taking the matter to court and on January 13 both Antelo and Ortega Smith passed through the Investigating Court Number 4 of Cartagena, who defended that the expulsion had been adjusted to what was established in the Vox statutes, and that all the elected officials of the party are informed before presenting themselves for the elections that they must sign powers of attorney to the national leadership for the sake of, they ensure, transparency, control, supervision and oversight of the proper functioning of the autonomous branches of the party .

The judge, however, has agreed with the rebels based on the regulations of the Regional Assembly, which establishes that it is the members of the parliamentary groups who must manage their funds and hire the personnel they consider appropriate.

"There are sufficient indications to believe that the revocation of powers carried out by the plaintiffs could be a reason for retaliation by the leaders of the party to which they belonged", affirms the sentence, which insists that this revocation of powers "is not a conduct that may be subject to a sanction of the gravity of the expulsion”, nor is the expulsion of workers without consulting Madrid.

The judge does not consider the rest of the arguments used by the party committee to justify the expulsion proven either: there is no evidence that the deputies leaked the news to the media, or that they committed irregularities in accounting and administrative management, nor that they hurled insults at the dismissed workers.

Only the sentence does not agree with the request of those expelled to be compensated by Vox for the damages caused in these months.

The judicial decision, which can be appealed before the Provincial Court of Murcia, declares null, in addition to the expulsion of the deputies, the call for the primary elections that Vox held in Murcia in September 2020, since neither Liarte, nor Campuzano nor Carrera were able to appear, although they expressed their desire, because they were expelled.

The reinstatement of these three deputies in the party will not have, a priori, consequences in the regional government, which has not ruled on the process.