The backfire. Jose Maria Maciasthe small Machiavelli who leads the 10 members of the conservative sector elected in December 2013 -it is said soon they will enter their tenth year when they were elected by five!-, left the headquarters of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) with a changed face, according to several sources consulted by this newspaper. The conservative sector had requested a extraordinary plenary session with the certainty that the progressive group would reject the appointment of judges Cesar Tolosa Y Maria Luisa Segoviano for him Constitutional Court (TC) and progressives, one after another, without warning supported him. Both magistrates were unanimously elected. Now it’s time to Pedro Gonzalez-Trevijanooutgoing president of the TC, fulfill his promise: with the two appointments he would convene -he said- this week -on Thursday 29- the extraordinary plenary session of the TC to give the placet to the two appointed by the CGPJ already Juan Carlos Field Y Laura Diezby the Government.
Macías led the game of mus with Rafael Mozopresident of the CGPJ, and Alvaro Cuesta, the spokesman for the progressive group, in contact, according to sources consulted with magistrates of the TC. Macías went so far as to propose that they elect anyone except Jose Manuel Bandresmagistrate of the Third Chamber of Administrative Litigation of the Supreme Court.
But it was the vowel Juan Martinez Moya, magistrate of Social Affairs, who suggested to his conservative peers why not incorporate María Luisa Segoviano, a labor magistrate like him, who was part of the first list of five magistrates from the progressive sector presented in the negotiation with the conservatives, last September . Macías accepted her and told her progressive interlocutors that she was an “anecdote.”
On Christmas’ Eve
Mozo and Cuesta began to chew on the idea on Christmas Eve, the day after the conservative sector asked the president for the new extraordinary plenary session and raised the Tolosa-Segoviano duo, which meant replacing the magistrate Pablo Lucas proposed in the previous initiative, who did not it achieved the 11 votes (3/5 out of 18 members) required. But they did not quite believe that Macías and his colleagues would vote for Segoviano. So they decided that it was best to take this game of mus in secret.
Segoviano was supported to be president of the Fourth Social Chamber of the Supreme Court, among others, by members of the CGPJ such as Clara Martínez de Careaga, who has been challenged by Macías and four other conservatives. She is highly respected as a labor magistrate and has been affiliated with JFUCK FOR DEMOCRACY.
“Our first reaction when they proposed the extraordinary plenary session and Segoviano instead of Lucas was to reaffirm ourselves in Bandrés and we did that by formalizing our proposal to see what they were going to do, see if it was a mere hare, but at the time we learned that González-Trevijano was going to block the new bill that had already been announced. We never had the guarantee that the conservative sector wanted to reach an agreement. We knew that individual people were reluctant to continue blocking but also that they were fearful. One of them told us: ‘ We don’t want them to take our registration.’ In the last plenary session there was an attempt by conservative people who wanted to reach an agreement even by voting for Bandrés, but Macías immediately turned around, after meeting with them,” Álvaro Cuesta told EL NEWSPAPER.
It was in the group meeting this Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. when Mozo and Cuesta suggested that it was necessary overcoming the blockade after the coup of the TC against the Congress and the Senate in the name of the people. They anticipated, a few days before, Bandrés that, if indeed, María Luisa Segoviano was not a decoy they would vote for the Segoviano-Tolosa duo. Solvent sources reported that, without hiding his logical frustration in the face of the right-wing campaign against him, Bandrés agreed that the fundamental thing was to end the entrenched blockade.
By videoconference
Voting was done, as is the norm, in order of age, from youngest to oldest. The first three to vote were conservative members: Maru Carmona, José María Macías and Nuria Díaz Abad. The three for Tolosa-Segoviano. Macías took notes in a notebook that put the names.
In fourth place, Roser Bach, had to vote by videoconference from Barcelona. And here the first card of the progressive sector was turned face up. Bach said: Segovian-Tolosa. Macías couldn’t believe it, but it could be an exception. Then came the decisive turn: Clara Martínez de Careaga, whom Macías and a small group of four of him had unsuccessfully challenged for being the wife of Candid Count-Pumpidosaid that although he did not renounce Bandrés due to the need to overcome the blockade situation, he voted for Segoviano-Tolosa.
So there was no longer any doubt. Then Mar Cabrejas, Juan Martínez Moya voted, and he continued with several members who voted electronically for the duo.
During the year-end press conference, the Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, omitted in the presentation of the events of the year the crisis of the TC and CGPJ. That was a first clue that he was waiting for news, although he still, like the conservative vocals themselves, did not have them all with him. But he was on the parrot. That is why he said that the urgency of a new bill to prevent the blockades depended on what was decided in the CGPJ and that the parliamentary groups should debate about it.
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González-Trevijano, then, will have to fulfill his promise. There are already four magistrates on the table.
Time to go. Sooner rather than later, as we said yesterday.