“Sorry. I’m not talking to anyone until the process is over,” he replied to this newspaper Esteban Gonzalez Ponsthe negotiator of People’s Party who designs together with the minister Felix Bolanos the suit of the new General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), while the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayusohas warned that he is concerned about “filling the Judiciary with Tezanos disguised as judges.”
According to information from sources in contact with the negotiators and their collaborators, the birth of the new CGPJblocked in 2018, after the PP’s expectation was frustrated -partly due to its own conduct- of obtaining the presidency of the Supreme Court and CGPJ for the magistrate Manuel Marchenaand the failure – due to the strategy of the then president Paul Married– of the contacts between Teodoro Garcia Egea and Bolaños in 2021, it is already very close.
“It’s about giving the PP what it wants to allow Alberto Nuñez Feijoo explain to its leaders why after the blockade policy practiced for four years (November 2018-November 2022) this turn has taken place,” says a source consulted. “Many of us do not fully believe it, despite the fact that They assure us that this time there will be an agreement,” he adds.
It is that this need for the PP to load itself with arguments to justify the pact already happened precisely in November 2018. So, the former minister Rafael Catalanegotiated with the minister Dolores Delgado, which had been rejected twice in the Congress of Deputies, and this raised blisters in the leaders. Catalá explained to García Egea that, when the proposal that Marchena be the new president was accepted, this more than compensated for the change in conduct. The famous ‘whatsapp’ of Senate spokesman Ignacio Cosidó ruined the pact, after leaking Marchena’s name.
Precisely, Isabel Díaz Ayuso assumed this Thursday a position similar to that of the PP leaders in 2018.
The distortion of reality
“What worries me above all is a negotiation with the government, that of Pedro Sánchez, who lies by system, who is not trustworthy. We have to continue to be firm when it comes to demanding the depoliticization of the body of judges. It worries me also that this Council is filled with Tezanos disguised as judges, that the negotiations are firm and that they do not allow people with a card or close to a political party to occupy any position. I think that if justice is not independent and we do not take advantage of the opportunity we have now, this government will never have a single counterweight,” he said.
The president of the Community of Madrid intends to ignore that the reality is the opposite. An approximation to reality very typical of that described by the writer George Orwell in his famous 1984 work, on truth and blatant lies, the nature, in short, of exercising power through the distortion of reality.
How else would he have said when announcing his next resignation on September 7 -with Feijóo sitting opposite-, the resigned president of the TS and CGPJ Carlos Lesmes -one of yours- that the law should be complied with, the CGPJ should be renewed with the current law, and the two corresponding magistrates of the Constitutional Court should be elected?
In other terms: what the PP had to lay down its long and closed resistance.
Conservatives and Progressives
In the mechanics of the renewal of the CGPJ imposed by the PP -postponing the appointments of the four expired magistrates of the TC, except for the Alfred MontoyaConservative, who resigned for health reasons last summer – until after the new Council takes office, underlies, precisely, the concern of the right for the next presidency of the Constitutional Court that will come out of the vote provided for by law once cover the magistrates with an expired mandate since last June 12.
The progressive sector, which will have seven magistrates against five from the conservative, will have to propose a candidate. Will that candidate be the one who will automatically become president? In arithmetic terms yes.
But, attention, what will the conservative sector do? Just vote against? Or drive a wedge in the progressive sector as he already did in 2017 when he got his vice-presidential candidate –Fernando Valdes Dal Re– did not obtain the majority because the position was offered to the magistrate Rock Embodiment formally from the progressive sector and she accepted it? Those sludge came out of those powders, when Roca’s vote was decisive in declaring the unconstitutionality of the state of alarm applied by the Government in the pandemic.
Balaguer wants unanimity
In an interview with this newspaper, Judge María Luisa Balaguer stated that she had two contradictory ideas at the same time and continued to function, proof, according to the American writer Francis Scott Fitzgerald, of first-class intelligence. One of those ideas is to be president if she manages to have enough votes and the other to vote for her colleague Candido Count-Pumpido if he gets them. But, of course, for Conde-Pumpido to get them they need their progressive peers to vote for him. If not, how should it be? Balaguer, on the other hand, wants to be president not as a candidate from the progressive sector but unanimously.
That is to say: after nine years of domination by the right in court, the progressive sector, according to Balaguer’s vision, should seek a pact with the conservatives similar to the one that materialized when choosing Pedro Gonzalez-Trevijano in the fall of 2021, to achieve a unanimous presidency.
This almost campaign undertaken by the magistrate in the last month and a half has converged with the activity of the gatherings of magistrates in the Supreme Court and the media that have mobilized to get the PP to endorse the objective of blocking a presidency of the magistrate Count-Pumpido, come on, put as a condition to the Government that the renewal of the CGPJ will be frustrated once again if it is not assured that the aforementioned magistrate “will not pass.”
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The sources consulted indicate that this is a ‘wishful thinking’, an expression of wishes. That is to say: that at the Government-PP negotiation table that condition of the aforementioned circles is not nor is it expected.
But sound and fury in Madrid gossips, there are. And as the appointed hour approaches, they will increase in intensity.