A group of conservative members meets to block the renewal of the Constitutional Law promoted by Lesmes

Carlos Lesmes, in the center, chairs a meeting of the plenary session of the General Council of the Judiciary, on July 11. General Council of the Judiciary / EFE

The conservative sector of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) is preparing to go into shock and not allow the appointment of two Constitutional magistrates to prosper, and certainly not at the first attempt.

In order to finalize this blocking initiative, this group will hold a preparatory meeting on Tuesday for the plenary session that the governing body of the judges has convened for Thursday.

The objective of the members opposed to the appointments is to launch a resounding message of rejection of the initiative by which the Government returned to the Judiciary the power to appoint two members of the Constitutional Court, but without doing the same so that appointments can also be made. corresponding to the Supreme and other judicial bodies.

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The current Council of the Judiciary has a conservative majority, but the core dissident and critical of the renewal of the Constitution is usually made up of seven members.

They are the ones who voted against the acceptance of Álvaro García Ortiz as the new Attorney General of the State, on July 21.

García Ortiz, who took office in the Supreme Court on Monday, received, however, the support of the other 12 members of the Judiciary (currently, there are 19 counselors in total, after the death of Victoria Cinto in June and the retirement by Rafael Fernández Valverde in March).

If the same voting scheme were repeated now, the election of the two members of the Constitutional Assembly that the Council must elect would be assured, because there are at least 12 supports that are needed.

On the other hand, if the seven members of the hard core of the conservative bloc get some more support, they will be able to divide the Council in terms that make such appointments unfeasible, or that facilitate a candidacy

equally conservative.

The question is open, although a majority of the members have sent the president of the governing body of the judges, Carlos Lesmes, the message that they agree that the approved law should not be boycotted.

In parallel, the dissident group is planning a plenary preparatory meeting this Tuesday to which, in principle, the members José Antonio Ballestero, Ángeles Carmona, Nuria Díaz, Juan Manuel Fernández, José María Macías, Gerardo Martínez Tristán and Carmen Llombart are summoned. .

The members of this block consider it feasible to obtain support among members who do not belong to their group, but who in their opinion could end up voting for two conservative magistrates for the Constitutional.

They are based on the fact that some of them —such as Vicente Guilarte, Roser Bach and Enrique Lucas— voted against the reform promoted by the Government so that the Judiciary could not make appointments while it was in office.

These three members based their rejection of the aforementioned legal initiative of the Executive on the fact that the Council had not been consulted on the suppression of its own powers.

In the Government, public statements on this matter are avoided so as not to add more pressure because they understand that it is an issue that must be resolved by the General Council of the Judiciary.

The Executive is concerned about the pressure it attributes to the PP and its environment on the members of the conservative sector, and even some progressives, so that they do not renew the two members of the Constitutional that correspond to them before the 13th. The Government is convinced that the PP will pull its strings to the end to try to prevent the CGPJ from complying with its obligation to appoint, but at the same time it believes that there is an important group of conservative members and all the progressives who, along the lines set out by Lesmes in his declarations of the Monday, they want to renew the Constitutional as required by law.

For the conservative bloc, the legal reform that has returned to the Council the competence of the appointments of the Constitutional has no other purpose than to "control" the court of guarantees, with manifest contempt for the Supreme Court and the consequence that its work is seen seriously hampered, due to the impossibility of covering leave or retirement.

The leading core of this group, in any case, has stood out for its opposition to all kinds of government initiatives in the current legislature.

In the eyes of the Executive, therefore, its existence and its actions are not aimed at safeguarding the judicial system, but rather at hindering the task of the Executive itself, for purely ideological reasons that put the desire to wear it down before any other consideration.

To try to favor the agreement, it will be proposed in Thursday's plenary session that the magistrate proposed by the conservative sector and the one presented by the progressive bloc be voted on at the same time.

However, the President of the Council, Carlos Lesmes, will not take a firm proposal to a vote until it is confirmed that an agreement has been reached on that tandem.

Lesmes declared on Monday that these appointments "must necessarily be made."

This task is assuming that he is attributed the desire to facilitate the objectives of the Government in exchange for a position in the Constitutional Court, an objective that he denied on Monday, describing as "indecent" that he "prevailed himself of the position to obtain that advantage".

What Lesmes has done is talk to members of the conservative sector to try to convince them that the appointments should not be blocked.

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