The Central Electoral Board has given five days to the vice president of the Parliament, Alba Vegés, (ERC), to inform him about the steps he has taken to withdraw the seat from the suspended president of the chamber, Laura Borràs. The electoral body decided on May 4 to strip her of the record and has now responded to a request from Ciudadanos who informed her a day later that the Bureau had not yet proceeded to withdraw her seat. The orange group also demanded that all members of the Bureau be sanctioned for ignoring their criteria and asked that they be given 24 hours to report. Borràs was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for having committed the crimes of prevarication and falsehood to benefit a friend in the award of contracts.
The request for information from the Electoral Board is the previous step to a formal requirement for Borràs to be stripped of the record. The Parliament presented on the 5th before the Supreme Court an appeal requesting precautionary measures to annul the withdrawal of the seat alleging among other reasons that politics already has its rights and duties suspended. The Supreme Court has already rejected the request of the lawyers of the leader of Junts to apply the precautionary measures to suspend the request of the JEC. Vergés has until the middle of next week to respond coinciding with the electoral campaign.
On May 4, the JEC dispossessed Borràs of his seat and issued the credential of the next deputy on the JxCat list for Barcelona, Antoni Castellà. That same day, the chamber approved to present a contentious-administrative appeal before the Supreme Court in defense of the minutes of the suspended president and the regulations of the institution that stipulates that a parliamentarian can only lose his seat when the sentence is final. The LOREG, however, establishes that an elected official can lose the record even if the sentence is appealable.
All the groups of the Parliament, except Junts, have called on Borràs to leave the institution and facilitate the appointment of a new president for the dignity of the institution. PSC and the commons maintain that it is a responsibility of both Junts and ERC and also of the CUP, which with its abstention facilitated that Borràs reached the presidency. The Bureau of the Chamber shuffles that an extraordinary plenary session can be held on Tuesday, May 30, two days after election day, to appoint a new president of the Parliament.