The decision of the Electoral Board on the Borràs seat stresses both Junts and ERC

The Central Electoral Board (JEC) meets this Thursday in Madrid and on the agenda is the debate on what to do with the seat of deputy in the Parliament of Laura Borràs.

The most certain thing is that she loses it, since the electoral law establishes as a cause of ineligibility a sentence, even if it is not final, for crimes against the Public Administration.

The also leader of Junts has already been sentenced by the Catalan Superior Court to 4.5 years in prison and 13 years of disqualification for prevarication and falsehood and whose defense has communicated this Thursday to the Supreme Court its intention to appeal.

However, one of the possibilities is that the JEC refers the case to the Electoral Board of Barcelona, ​​thus lengthening a decision that fully impacts the institutional normality of the Chamber.

The tension within Junts and ERC also increases,

The two pro-independence formations await the decision with great interest, although for different reasons.

In Junts, with a lot of effort, they have conspired to postpone the debate on the future of their president until after the municipal elections.

The statutes of the formation, reformed in the congress last year, establish that the presidency of the party must be abandoned if there is a final sentence, unless it is proven that it is a case of lawfare

The party has closed ranks with Borràs regarding this assumption, but it is the internal guarantees commission that has to rule on the existence of this alleged legal war.

The president of that body, Magda Oranich, has already expressed her discrepancies in public about the defense of the parliamentary leader.

This debate goes hand in hand about what will happen to the presidency of the Chamber: a part of Junts believes that the interim must be ended and a figure of great political weight and a speaker must be recovered.

They are the majority in the face of a weakened

and whose calls to stand up to the decision do not have much echo.

That is where ERC comes in.

The Republicans have tried to put themselves in profile in everything related to the Borràs case.

Since the sentence of the suspended president, different voices from the Republicans have not stopped urging Junts to make a move to designate a successor in the leadership of the Executive, thus responding to the commitment that the independence majority of the Chamber be reflected in the Table.

Those of Oriol Junqueras have ruled out supporting the PSC's proposal to modify the Parliament's regulations to have a mechanism for the expulsion of the members of the governing body of the Catalan legislature.

They argue that it is an

but they hope that a decision by the JEC will take pressure off other ways to solve the interim.

It is not the first time that Parliament has faced the electoral authority making a sudden decision on a deputy, following a sentence that implies penalties of disqualification.

It already happened in January 2020 with Quim Torra (although he continued to serve as

until September, when his sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court) and in the same month of 2022 with the anti-capitalist deputy Pau Juvillà.

In both cases, they had been tried and found guilty of a crime of disobedience, for not removing pro-independence symbols from public buildings.

The JEC acted directly in these cases because the sentences came out of the electoral period.

This implies that the Provincial Electoral Boards are not activated (they are dissolved 100 days after each electoral date), it was only possible for the Central (which is permanent) to make a decision.

The discourse was and is the same on the part of the independence movement: that an administrative body cannot withdraw a record, even more so if the Chamber's own regulations set the final judgment of justice as the scale to remove a record.

Despite this conceptual opposition, even Borràs herself obeyed the decision on Juvillà.

If the central Electoral Board decides to act directly, Junts would have more pressure to make a move in the replacement of the Parliament presidency.

That would shake the intention of the party's general secretary, Jordi Turull, to wait until after the municipal elections to address the debate.

Republicans would be urged to act if Junts insists on the interim.

On the other hand, if there is inhibition before the Barcelona Board, Borràs would gain time.

Not only because he would have to wait until that body sets a date to discuss his situation, but he would also have a new instance (the JEC) to which to appeal in case of being stripped of the seat.

The former deputy of Unió and founder of Demòcrates, Antoni Castellà, is the next on the list.

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