Allow me, given the knowledge we profess to each other, to tell you that your star is threatened by one of the most shameful and indelible stains. Since it is being done so without reason and in such an immodest way, I will speak. I only want the light to be made, according to the information that I am going to examine. That stain as shameful as it is indelible is the knowing breach of the Constitution. I do not doubt that you are aware of this because no one has been able to say it more clearly. It was on October 19 that you declared: “The Spanish Constitution it must be fulfilled from foot to footfrom the first to the last of the chapters every day of the year whether you are in the government or in the opposition”.
On December 4, it will be nine years since the current governing body of judges, the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), was established for a period of five years, as established in article 568.1 of the Constitution, and already practically, with a year to go, double that constitutional mandate. And on December 12, it will be six months since four Constitutional Court magistrates -two for the Government of Mariano Rajoy and two for the former CGPJ- completed their nine-year term since their appointment in 2013.
The Government and the People’s Party of paul married agreed in February 2021 to renew the board of RTVE and in October of that year to do the same with the Court of Accountsthe Ombudsman and the four seats of the TC. Casado reserved the veto for the renewal of the CGPJ, which had already expired for three years.
Indeed, Casado lent his last support to the renewal of the CGPJ in November 2018, when the five-year term was about to expire, by obtaining the agreement from the PSOE to appoint president of the Supreme Court and CGPJ -both institutions are directed by the same person- to the then president of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court, Manuel Marchena. Then there was no objection from the PP to the election system.
The name was leaked, the PP bench, reluctant to agree with Sánchez, was informed that this agreement was highly profitable since it would allow through Marchena “control the Second Room from behind & rdquor; via the presidency of the aforementioned magistrate in the Supreme Court and CGPJ. In addition to the control of the Criminal Chamber, competent to prosecute deputies, senators and members of the Government, “it has been a wonderful move because we were risking the future renewals of 2/3 of the Supreme Court and hundreds of appointments in the judicial power, vital for the PP and for the future of Spain& rdquor ;, he wrote ignacio sewn, the then PP spokesman in the Senate to his fellow soldiers. Such a ‘striptease’ was the suicide of the pact.
What therefore mattered was not the system of election of the members of the CGPJ but the appointments of magistrates “vital for the PP & rdquor ;.
After said fiasco, Casado reserved the CGPJ for himself with the support of conservative members for his maneuvers, under the pretext of modifying the election system.
The arrival of Feijóo
On April 12, 2022, Mr. President, I spoke by phone with Esteban González Pons, with the brand new head of the negotiations who had relieved Enrique López. He was in Brussels. He assured me that the new president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, He was not going to delay the renewal of the CGPJ and that the Andalusian regional elections, about to be called, were not going to be an obstacle to it.
But the contacts between González Pons and the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, would soon show that the renewal would be delayed, this time on behalf of the Andalusian regional authorities, whose celebration was announced on April 25.
It was approaching, Mr. President, June 12, 2022. What relevance did this date have? Well the following: four seats expired in the Constitutional Court. Rajoy had appointed magistrates Enrique López and Pedro Gonzalez-Trevijano on June 12, 2013 for nine years. López had to resign a year later, after being caught on a motorcycle without a helmet by the police and skipping a red light, quadrupling the blood alcohol level on Madrid’s Paseo de la Castellana, and Rajoy appointed Supreme Attorney Lieutenant Antonio Narváez.
But together with those two magistrates to be replaced, two other mandates expired on the same date that corresponded to designate the expired CGPJ.
The Government had prohibited, you will remember, in the organic law of 2021 making appointment to the acting CGPJ. And although he could appoint the two magistrates that he had to do in the TC, he preferred, since the CGPJ was prohibited from making them, to modify the legal norm and authorize them to be carried out, taking into account that the appointment of the magistrates of the TC It is a mandate of the Constitution, which is above the organic law that in 2021 had prohibited all types of appointments to the TC.
Therefore, according to the new rule of July 27, 2022, the four appointments should be ready on September 13.
Messages to Moncloa
Before the summer and in the month of September, you should remember, the outgoing president of the TC, González-Trevijano, and also the president of the Supreme Court and CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, sent messages to La Moncloa. The appointment of the two magistrates by the Government will not be accepted if at the same time they are not accompanied by the two that the CGPJ must designate. They will not be given possession. The Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, received the same message from both.
Did this barricade, which the media and judicial right parroted like a parrot, have any basis? Zero. González-Trevijano himself signed, together with all the others, a unanimous sentence (2016) whose rapporteur was the progressive magistrate Fernando Valdés Dal Ré in which it was established, precisely against a PSOE appeal, that there could be a partial renovationin this case of the CGPJ, if one of the chambers did so and the other was not in a position to make its choice.
And although the complete renovation of the CGPJ was a legitimate option of the organic legislator, he pointed out, it was necessary to foresee another scenario. “But the normative provisions do not guarantee, with their only binding statement, the full effectiveness of the provisions therein, so that no constitutional objection can be opposed to the legislator providing subsidiary preventions for the hypothesis that, having to attend both Chambers, for separately, to the designation of the members whose proposal corresponds to them, only one of them, for whatever reasons, is in a position to fulfill its mission & rdquor ;.
And here is the paragraph which you should keep in mind. “The proposal or designation that we are dealing with is, for each of the Chambers, a genuine power-duty. A power, without a doubt, but also, at the same time, a duty ex Constitutione, [desde la Constitución] with transferable terms here regarding legal provisions related to the renewal of this same Constitutional Court & rdquor ;.
In other words, it is also valid in the event that a similar situation occurs in the TC.
That the renewal of the four magistrates whose mandate has expired on June 12 is, in terms of the sentence, a “must power & rdquor; according to the Constitution.
And not what the members of the CGPJ or the PP want.
And as I write this, I cannot fail to transcribe for you, Mr. President, what a member of the CGPJ has written to me, whose name I am prudently reserving.
“The times are marked by the conservative vowels. Most are still yours. From within, no one is willing to do more than continue “negotiating & rdquor; (or as I see it, providing alibis and time on the right). The impulse has to come from outside & rdquor ;.
The maneuvers of the conservatives
First, according to the right, no Supreme Court magistrate expressed interest in going to the TC.
On September 7, a “regulation & rdquor; to make those two appointments. The resignation of Carlos Lesmes eliminated pressure on the conservative sector to make them. And already under the command of an ideologue, Jose Maria MaciasThe excuses continued. The progressive sector proposed five names from their sector and even some conservative ones.
But the conservative sector, which did not propose anyone, demanded that only one name be proposed. The progressive sector elected the magistrate Jose Manuel Bandres. And the conservatives and their media mailboxes began to attack the chosen one, and “suggesting& rdquor; to a “progressive & rdquor; in the person of magistrate Pablo Lucas. That is to say: the technique of Lesmes. I choose a conservative and the progressive… also.
But when challenging the conservative member and magistrate of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, Wenceslas OleaLesmes’s right-hand man, the appointment of Rafael Mozo acting president and request a super-urgent precautionary measure and another urgent precautionary measure to annul said designation, the conservative group found another trick.
Namely: until the precautionary measure is resolved, the appointment cannot be made because said appointment could be invalidated. The very precautionary measure was rejected on October 18 by the sixth section (Third Chamber) and the precautionary measure was also rejected on Wednesday, November 23rd. Didn’t the Francisco de Vitoria association challenge the appointment of Lesmes in 2013? And that’s not why the appointments were suspended. It was dismissed in 2014 by the Supreme Court.
The underlying problem: the PP and the conservative sector do not want to make the appointments because they will lose the majority of the TC in favor of the progressive sector and resist from their trenches in Genoa and the CGPJ the next and inevitable progressive presidency of the court of guarantees.
This Wednesday the 23rd, the agenda of the ordinary plenary session of the CGPJ on Thursday the 24th has been modified to introduce a point in which the “negotiations& rdquor; for the happy appointments. I mean: bad.
Comply with the Constitution
Mr. President, you have to fully comply with the Constitution. You can no longer continue to fail at least since September 13, 2022, allowing himself to be dragged by Genoa. Open the way in the middle of the “fog of war & rdquor; of the sedition reform and the footnote of the storm fabricated around the beginning of the initial application of the “only yes is yes” law, and already name the two candidates. Like Rajoy in 2013 and 2014.
It’s been months since you seem to be “getting ready& rdquor; to make appointments. No longer available. make them.
Five years celebrating the day of the Constitution on December 6, violating it by the PP is enough. And it is time, in any case, that maliciously and knowingly breaching the Constitution and the Organic Law of the Judiciary is at least a crime.
Sincerely.