Although what reaches the population through the newspaper headlines is that the whole problem that is experienced in the spanish justice It is due to a fight between the two great parties destined to agree in the chambers (each one, Congress and Senate, elects 10 members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) by a parliamentary majority of 3/5) the truth is terrifying: the entire judicial and constitutional edifice has collapsed.
The 3/5 bipartisanship designed by the Constitution to govern the main institutions is crippled because one of those parties, the Popular Party, has abandoned it. He did so after failing in November 2018 when the presidency of the supreme court Y CGPJ agreed with the PSOE to place the candidate proposed by Rafael Catalá, former Minister of Justice of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, and responsible for justice of the PP. It was the president of the Second Chamber of the Supreme, Manuel Marchena. So Pablo Casado did not see any obstacle in the current election system. And actually, it’s not an impediment now either.
The CGPJ, which took office on December 4, 2013 for five years, will enter the tenth year of its exercise on December 4. That is to say: he practically is oriented to fulfill -it is said soon- two mandates.
This crisis is so serious that it cannot be solved by pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The president of the Supreme and CGPJ, Carlos Lesmes, can resign and be replaced during his term. And it happened in 2012 with Carlos Dívar. Then, the vice president of the CGPJ assumed the presidency and the president of the oldest chamber of the Supreme took over the presidency of the Court.
But when the president’s mandate has expired three years and nine months ago, as is the case with Lesmes, it’s not the same anymore. Before, until 2013, there was a vice president of the CGPJ. But since then Lesmes invented a vice presidency of the Supreme and CGPJ. And the vice president, Ángel Juanes, retired in 2019. As the CGPJ had expired almost a year ago, the acting members decided not to appoint a substitute because they expected to be renewed and understood that this task corresponded to the new Council.
Casado’s PP treated the CGPJ, with the support of conservative members, as his particular toy. And this extended CGPJ was becoming a entrenched anomaly over the years.
The preventive plan of “self-succession & rdquor; of the president of the Supreme Court and General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) -who threatens to resign- implies a “self-coup & rdquor; strategic, that of placing a Supreme Court magistrate at the top of the judiciary from above and through a false door, or at least, not provided for by the constitutional system.
The staging of Lesmes and the solution he has found for what is still his “non-resignation”, was it inevitable? The president could wait for the CGPJ to make the appointments of two magistrates of the constitutional Court (TC) that corresponds to this CGPJ, but has created a new problem, before electing them and before renewing the CGPJ.
With the rabbit that he has extracted from his hat, he places the magistrates of the Supreme Court at the head of the CGPJ. Now, if Lesmes succeeds, the oldest room president, Francisco Marín Castán, will be the president; but this magistrate, who is a candidate for the TC, retires next year if he does not request the two-year extension.
And if the CGPJ is not renewed until the next elections, and if Marín Castán leaves it, who would be his replacement? The oldest room president. And who is he? Manuel Marchena. He was appointed in November 2014.
Lesmes has laid out the track for French billiards, or carom. The three balls: Lesmes, Marín Castán, and Marchena.
Marchena has been since 2013, when he was not yet president of the Second Chamber, with his project to become president of the Supreme Court and CGPJ. He was one of the candidates proposed by the PP to the PSOE. And he lost the position because Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba accepted the rival candidate: Lesmes.
In 2018, the former minister and head of justice of the PP during the presidency of Casado, proposed the name of Marchena -with the consent of the interested party- and initially obtained the support of the PSOE and the Government. But the operation by which Marchena left the presidency of the court of the ‘procés’ was frustrated after an operation that leaked his name in advance and the famous WhatsApp of the PP spokesman in the Senate, Ignacio Cosidó, elaborated on a text by Teodoro García Aegean.
There he explained to his bench of senators – opposed to agreeing with the Minister of Justice Dolores Delgado, who was rejected for the third time in Congress those days – that Marchena was a “hopeful result & rdquor ;. He remembered the fact that it had been vetoed by Pérez Rubalcaba in 2013. “It was a great move. We were risking the future renewals of 2/3 of the Supreme Court and hundreds of appointments from the Judiciary, vital for the PP and for the future of Spain & rdquor ;. And if that didn’t seem like enough, she added: “And controlling the Second Room from behind & rdquor ;. That is to say: from the presidency of the Supreme.
Game board layout
Therefore, Lesmes has deployed the French billiards court. Behind Marín Castán, then, it is Marchena who follows him. Although he has already made it known that he is not interested in the position at this time.
Lesmes requested the “technical & rdquor; of succession behind the progressive sector in the CGPJ. Although he has insisted before members of that sector that his resignation is serious several times in recent weeks, he omitted the issue of the succession report.
The next ordinary plenary session, scheduled for this Thursday the 28th, foresees appointments in the TC on its agenda -it is the first time it has been on the agenda- and the technical report will be addressed at the point of accountability.
Sources from the progressive sector, who have kept quiet their opinion contrary to the proposal that the Supreme Court be placed at the top of the CGPJ, will take note of the report -which Lesmes did not send them- without entering the debate.
Related news
The priority is the appointments in the TC. Lesmes claims to have four magistrates from the conservative bloc who support making the appointments. The five together with the progressive members can, therefore, agree on the two magistrates for the TC. Surely in an extraordinary plenary session convened for next week. The issue of succession, therefore, will be left for later.
The judicial and constitutional degradation is such that Spain presents a landscape of a failed state -self-generated- before the visit of the European Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, whom the PP will try to use against the Government when since November 2018 it blocks the CGPJ and since July passed the partial renewal of the TC.