The Francisco de Vitoria association says it is concerned about the inclusion of a phrase that would allow the Government to change the system of election of members, while the TC states that it is indifferent to any modification
Since Cándido Conde-Pumpido assumed the presidency of the Constitutional Court, it seems that any excuse is a good one to denounce the alleged politicization of the guarantee court. The latest episode of the controversy has arisen over a paragraph included in the sruling that endorses the reform of the Government of Pedro Sánchez that prevents the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) from making appointments while in office.
The second judicial association in number of members, the Association of Judges and Magistrates Francisco de Vitoria, has made public a statement from its national committee in which they denounce that the ruling includes a paragraph that they consider “unnecessary” to resolve Vox’s appeal against the law that vetoed the appointments of an acting Council, with which the Government dealt in vain to force the PP to renew a body that in December will have doubled its planned five-year mandate. The TC downplays the importance of the expression and assures this newspaper that it is a common statement made by the person who was the speaker of the sentence, María Luisa Balaguer.
The paragraph in question is the one that says: “Nor there is an exclusive constitutional definition of the system of appointment of members of the CGPJ, it being possible, within the constitutional framework, that the proposal for his appointment comes in whole or in part from the Congress or the Senate. According to the judicial association, the TC “is facing a serious crisis of credibility, due both to the criteria for choosing its magistrates and to the systematic procedure of the court by blocks, which is hardly compatible with resolution methods in which the legal takes precedence over the ideological.
For the conservative association that “the TC pronounces expressly and without necessity on the constitutional validity of a system of election of the members of the CGPJ” which, says the group, “partially coincides with a budding initiative to reform the Organic Law of Power Judicial (LOPJ) in order for the Congress of Deputies to elect the members currently appointed by the Senate, lacks legal justification and rather seems like an attempt to influence an open political debate in our country.”
From the conservative sector of the General Council of the JudiciaryThey also warn this newspaper that there is a risk that the PSOE, supported by its government partners once the support for the investiture is resolved, will undertake a new legal reform that, based on this new doctrine of the Constitutional Court, allows robbing the Senate of its ability to appoint as is the case so far with six of the members of judicial origin, who would become a matter of the Congress of Deputies. In this way, the progressive majority would achieve control over the appointment of a total of 16 members (the judiciary plus the four jurists of recognized prestige that correspond to the lower house), thus circumventing the PP blockade for the renewal agreement.
Also with abortion
The Constitutional Court maintains that it is the habitual practice of the speaker of the sentence, María Luisa Balaguer, include the margin that the Constitution leaves to the laws, because it did not introduce any provision on the matter in question. He already did it in his concurrent vote on the abortion law and the deadlines and now he has done it with the appointments of members. Furthermore, they add that regardless of the inclusion or not of the paragraph, if the Government wants to change the election system and the Constitution does not say anything about it, as the questioned expression indicates, it would not be unconstitutional.
In contrast, they remember that the Constitution does establish how the appointment of magistrates of the court itself should occur; If it does not say anything about the members it is because the constituent fathers did not consider it relevant, while they did understand it to be necessary in the Constitutional.
Regarding the proposal that the same paragraph not be included in the ruling with which the PP appeal on the same matter still pending will be resolved, the sources consulted recall that the second resolutions on the same matter are shorter than the original ones because They refer to the jurisprudence established therein.