The president of the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Carlos Lesmes, has fifteen votes – three more than the three-fifths majority necessary – to comply, between September 8 and 13, with the constitutional obligation -postponed from last June 12- of appoint two magistrates to replace the expired mandates of the magistrates of the Constitutional Court Santiago Martínez-Vares (conservative) and Juan Antonio Xiol, current vice president (progressive). With them and the two that the Government will appoint in turn to replace the current president Pedro González-Trevijano (conservative) and Antonio Narváez (conservative) a new stage will open: that of the majority of the progressive sector in the TC. After taking office, the new president and vice president, respectively, will be elected, as required by law.
The paradox is that the president and the members of the CGPJ who are going to elect the two new magistrates of the TC are, in turn, members whose mandates have expired for three and a half years, that is, since December 2018. These members already expired three and a half years ago, they are going to appoint the magistrates who expired last June 12, who will fulfill their expired terms in September for three months. If both expirations are compared, it could be concluded that it is not a big deal either.
But that would be a misreading. Because these expirations are induced. The judiciary is a battlefield in which a right, the Popular Party, which no longer governs since June 2018, keeps intact -and renewed for their interests in certain estates- the previous command structure. A much more than symbolic expression of the squatter treatment that this right has given Pedro Sánchez since the triumph of the motion of censure and the consolidation of a judicial State.
Desperation in the PP
Faced with the renewal and warning that President Lesmes can no longer go ahead with the blockade of the PP, the right, desperate for the upcoming loss of positions in the TC and in the CGPJ, has started with its innocuous last-minute bomblets: the hoaxes A premonition that nothing more than entangling can be done before the unstoppable renewal.
The first in order of appearance is the one referred to the magistrate of the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court José Ricardo de Prada, member of the majority of the court of the Gürtel case first period, whose sentence, essentially ratified by the Supreme Court, described that the PP promoted “an authentic and effective system of institutional corruption through the manipulation of central, regional and local public procurement & rdquor ;.
According to the message repeated by the “pastors”, the media, his “cattle & rdquor;, the members of the CGPJJudge De Prada is one of the two that the Government is going to appoint to replace one of the two losers. Already vetoed to be part of the CGPJ in 2018, Pedro Sánchez would have resurrected him to appoint him in the TC.
It’s a hoax. The government, as it has done on other occasions, will appoint professors from different specialties as magistrates. Appointing judges or former ministers is scoring one’s own goal. Because they should abstain in important votes, with which the progressive majority would be diminished or weakened. It could be argued that Pedro Sánchez does not care, as he has shown with the former Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, whom he appointed State Attorney General. But he has learned a lesson in his own flesh.
The new hoax places the president of the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court Manuel Marchena, who would have “resigned & rdquor; to enter the TC, which in turn would create a problem because he would enjoy, according to the invention, the support of the PP and PSOE, and this would not unblock the two appointments in the CGPJ.
Marchena and the Second Room
The whole construction is meaningless. Because Manuel Marchena (63 years old) has no interest in joining a TC with a progressive majority, neither a significant number of members of the CGPJ are in favor of the work, nor the PP, and this is relevant, has any incentive to suggest that he abandon the presidency of the Second Chamber, which is in charge of prosecuting members of the Government and many graduated . Because his substitute would not be a conservative but the magistrate Andrés Martínez Arrieta.
So that? To be in the minority for several years? To have to refrain from relevant issues such as which he was a rapporteur in the 2019 ruling on the ‘procés’? Or in the case of the sentences pending in the amparo appeals against the Supreme Court ruling on the Canarian deputy Alberto Rodríguez and against his expulsion from the Congress of Deputies, resolved by President Meritxell Batet after maintaining contacts with Marchena, a member of the court that sentenced you to 45 days of disqualification, which will end in a decision to deprive you of your seat? Would one less vote serve the next Conservative minority on relevant issues?
But there is also the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court. In November 2018, when Marchena was preparing to undertake a project that failed for him in 2013 -being president of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ-, the secret negotiation between former minister Rafael Catalá and minister Dolores Delgado to appoint Marchena met a jog when it was leaked that the president of the Second Chamber was the agreed person, a waterway to abort his candidacy. But, in addition, to explain to the senators – eager for revenge against the failed Delgado – why the agreement was worth it, the then general secretary of the PP, Teodoro García Egea, wrote a text that the Senate spokesman, Ignacio Cosidó, sent by watsapp to his entire benchin which he presumed that putting Marchena meant putting “an exceptional president & mldr; and also controlling the Second Chamber from behind and the room of 61 [la que es presidida por el presidente del Supremo y decide sobre temas de gran relevancia] It was a great move & rdquor ;. If it was so important for the PP to “control the Second Chamber from behind”, why is it now going to stop controlling it from the front?
Marchena issued a statement announcing his decision “not to be included in the case in which he was considered among the candidates for the post of President of the Supreme Court and General Council of the Judiciary.” The magistrate was not among the candidates. He was the agreed candidate. And for this she had secretly lent her agreement to Catalá who proposed her to Delgado. Everything was already tied up.
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The leak of his first name and the García Egea-Cosidó whatsapp dynamited his second attempt to access the position. He therefore did not give up what, in reality, he no longer had after the explosion. Now, the circulating hoax also maintains that Marchena has “resigned & rdquor; to which she also did not have at hand in this case even without being interested in it: that is to say to enter the TC.
On the other hand, it is also a tradition that the conservative sector chooses a man who has been president of the Professional Association of the Magistrature (APM), the organization of conservative magistrates. It happened in 2012 with the nomination of magistrate Ramón Rodríguez Arribas and it was like that again in 2019 with that of Santiago Martínez-Vares, who was even already retired. That’s why Pablo Llarena, who was president of the APM, is a possible candidate.