Will he lose the presidency of Parliament?

The article 25.4 of the regulation makes explicit that in cases in which a deputy is accused of crimes “linked to corruption”, the Parliamentary Board, “once the writ of opening of the trial and is aware of it, you must agree to the suspension of rights and parliamentary duties Immediately“.

All the parties, except Junts, consider that the crimes attributed to Borràs are related to corruption, although the president denies that she may be subject to these considerations because she insists that hers is a political cause. Corruption itself does not appear in the Penal Codebut the General Council of the Judiciary does include the crime of prevarication in this category.

In the Table, there are five votes from the PSC, ERC and the CUP in favor of suspending it -directly or indirectly- and two from Junts, but the president will not be able to vote due to conflict of interest, so the party will only register one vote in defense of Borràs, the one with the secretary aurora madaula.

In the event that doubts arise about the type of crime or about the applicable regime of incompatibilities, as is foreseeable considering the will of the president, the Parliamentary Table can request an opinion from the Commission of the Statute of Deputies which is chaired by one of Borràs’ trusted men, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas (Together).

The precedent of the ‘Juvillà case’ marks that this opinion, whether favorable or not to Borràs, is later put to a vote in plenary without the president’s pronouncement, since she advocated a conflict of interest to veto the delegated vote of the coupero . This is where the ERC and the CUP come into play, which have always distanced themselves from corruption and separate the Borràs case from the prosecutions of independentistas within the framework of the ‘procés’.

The route that Borràs could use is for the opinion to focus on the article 25.1 of the regulation and not in 25.4 that suspends it immediately, because it establishes that the deputies of the Parliament can be suspended “if the order of indictment or the opening of an oral trial is firm and the plenary session of the Parliament agrees to it by an absolute majority, given the nature of the imputed facts”. In this case, crimes related to corruption are not mentioned and for it to be removed, the CUP votes because PSC, Vox, Cs, PPC and En Comú Podem add up to 61 and the majority is 68 (with the anti-capitalists they would reach 70). This vision would compromise Esquerrawhich should decide which side it is on and, at the same time, would divide the independence movement in the hemicycle and Borràs could send the message that its partners are publicly suspending it.

The inclusion of article 25.4 in the regulation was carried out by the cupwhich transacted the text with Together pel Yes (ERC and Together). On July 26, 2017, the melon of the regulation was opened to pave the rupture in the midst of the sovereignist pulse to carry out the disconnection laws and the anti-capitalists took advantage of this room for maneuver to approve the suspension of a deputy from his functions when an oral trial is opened for a case linked to crimes of corruption. It has never been applied, so the first precedent, therefore, would be that of Borràs, stripping her of her functions in Parliament.

The lawyers, at the request of Borràs, prepared a report that proposed several changes in the regulation and one of them referred precisely to article 25.4. They bet on suppressing it, alleging that “has no precedent nor referent in our parliamentary law”. “It contemplates a cause of suspension of the exercise of a fundamental right (that of political participation) that presents serious questions of constitutionality regarding the presumption of innocence, which is also a fundamental right”, the legal services then maintained. In a previous report, from 2018, it was suggested that the wording was ambiguous and that it should be clarified.

Last March the parliamentary groups constituted the commission that must modify the internal regulations to adapt it to the present. Teleworking, transparency, the equality plan and the ‘cordon sanitaire’ to the extreme right are positioned as the consensus priorities to be reformulated and all the parties, except Junts, insist that they have no intention of modifying article 25.4. In any case, a reformulation of the text would not arrive in time to shield Borràs, according to various parliamentary sources.

With the current regulations, Borràs could not act as a deputy or as president of the Parliament, but would keep his record as a parliamentarian because it is a temporary suspension and limited to the period between the opening of the oral trial and the subsequent sentence. In the event that she was acquitted, she would be able to practice again because she would not have run the list, since new credentials will not be issued.

However, at the moment in which it is without attributions, the presidency of the Catalan Chamber will be vacant and the first vice-president, Alba Verges, must assume its powers on an interim basis. This is provided that Junts wants to keep the position that Borràs occupies empty, because if he chooses to keep the position and exercise it, he can propose any other deputy from his ranks and vote for his candidacy in plenary.

Another option, more complex, involves the resignation of the first vice president and putting someone from Junts in her place – always subject to a vote – acting as an interim and reorganizing the quotas of power in this body. According to him agreement between ERC and Junts after the elections of 14-F, the former held command of the Generalitat and the latter led the Parlament.