The convening of a plenary session to assess the salary increase agreed between the Government and the associations of judges and prosecutors has resulted in a new almost grotesque situation in the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ), which has been in office since December 2018. The president of the body, the progressive Rafael Mozo, has convened the session forced by the request registered by five conservative members, who urged to analyze in full the salary agreement. The Council had planned an ordinary plenary session this Thursday, but Mozo was obliged to meet the request of the members within 72 hours and has chosen to advance that session to Wednesday. After learning of the decision, the councilors who demanded the extraordinary plenary session have asked that it be disconvened, claiming that the session had to be held before this Tuesday, when the Government and the associations plan to sign the salary agreement.
The assessment by the CGPJ of the pact of the Executive with the judges and prosecutors will not have any practical repercussions, but like almost everything that happens in the Council reveals the state of internal decomposition of a body that should have been renewed more than four years ago. The CGPJ has been represented by three members in the remuneration table in which the pact has been debated and closed. The three, from the conservative sector (José Antonio Ballestero, Juan Martínez Moya and Gerardo Martínez Tristán) have been informing the rest of the body of the Government's proposals, but have not submitted the offer to a joint debate.
On Friday afternoon, 24 hours after the Government and the associations made the pact public, five members of the CGPJ asked the president to convene an extraordinary plenary session to assess the agreement. The petition, to which EL PAÍS has had access, urged to set it for this Monday, May 22. The request is signed by two of the members who have attended the remuneration table (Ballestero and Martínez Tristán) and three other directors: José María Macías, Carmen Llombart and Enrique Lucas. All but Lucas (proposed by the PNV) were proposed by the PP in 2013 to be part of the CGPJ and two of them (Ballestero and Llombart) belong to the Professional Association of the Magistracy (APM), which represents the most conservative wing of the career and the only one of the seven associations of judges and prosecutors that has distanced itself from the salary increase agreement.
One of the signatories, asked by EL PAÍS, argues that the remuneration agreement must receive the approval of the body before being signed, and as the act of signing has been set for this Tuesday, the plenary session should have been held this Monday. On why the convocation of the plenary session has not been requested for last week, when the agreement was still being discussed and was susceptible to being modified, this counselor points out. "What we have to see is that what has been closed is correct; But we need the closed agreement because we are not part of it, we are observers. We can't sit down and give an opinion on a proposal."
The request to convene an extraordinary plenary session left President Mozo's hands tied because the Organic Law of the Judiciary provides that the president has to convene the session if five or more members request it in writing. The rule also dictates that this plenary session must be held "within three days" of the presentation of the request and, although the signatories maintained that this period expired on Monday, Mozo has interpreted that the weekend is non-working and has set the session for Wednesday.
Members consulted see in the request of the five members a new example of the pulse maintained by the conservative majority of the plenary with the alternate president of the body, of the progressive sector. One of the signatories of the petition does not hide his anger with the president for having convened the plenary session for a day after the salary agreement is signed. "There is a maximum legal period to convene the plenary session that may end on Wednesday, but there is a sensible one that is to convene it when it makes sense. Calling it for the day after is an insult," he says. The members who signed the petition of the plenary have signed another asking that it be disconvened, but the president, for the moment, has not done so.
Closing rows
After the institutional crisis generated by the election of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, which precipitated the resignation of President Carlos Lesmes, an apparent closing of ranks was staged around the figure of Mozo that has been diluted little by little. The climate, say several members, has been rarefied as the substitute of Lesmes has tried to carry out his position with more autonomy than the conservative sector intended him to have. "There is tension and it is getting more and more," says a progressive member. "Mozo should have been more proactive, he has not spoken over the weekend, despite everyone asking him if he was going to call. That has generated a lot of anger, "warns this counselor.
The president argues that after the decision to unite the extraordinary plenary session and the ordinary plenary in a single session is the intention to avoid having to pay the members allowances for attending a session that was going to have little or no practical consequences. In the current CGPJ, due to a change of model approved by the PP during the absolute majority of Mariano Rajoy and that is already repealed for the next Council, only seven directors have exclusive dedication and receive the full salary by the governing body of the judges. The rest maintain their usual dedication (judge or jurist) and receive a subsistence allowance for attendance at plenary sessions (975 euros) or legal commissions (312 euros). Holding two plenary sessions in the same week would have doubled the expenditure for the CGPJ and the remuneration for the members.