The minority partner of the Government insists on a reform to dispense with the votes of the PP in the renewal of the CGPJ | United We Can is “pessimistic” about a possible agreement between the two great formations
Can calls for a three-way negotiation to renew the CPGJ and cools any agreement that may be reached this Monday between PP and PSOE at the meeting of Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. “We can have to be part of that negotiation of the CGPJ as a legitimate member of the Government of Spain”, said the spokesman for the formation Pablo Fernández on Monday.
“The PSOE has to understand that bipartisanship is over“, he assured at the press conference after the party’s executive, where Fernández has demanded that “all parts of the Government” be in these conversations to renew the judicial leadership, suspecting that the two main parties reach a Until now, the purples delegated to the Minister of the Presidency Félix Bolaños the negotiation of the quota of United We Can, but now the minority coalition partner demands to be like one more member at that table.
“We are clear that the PP wants to exclude Podemos of that negotiation and that it has been a determining cause for the absence of an agreement. This, in our opinion, is absolutely undemocratic”, continued the leader, who has asked the Socialist Party “not to give in to pressure”.
In this sense, Fernández has denounced that the resignation of the president of the CGPJ Carlos Lesmes is a “coordinated operation with the Popular Party” with the aim of blocking the appointments of the Constitutional Court that would form a new progressive majority in the constitutional body.
These statements come a few hours after the first reaction of United We Can to the resignation, for which it asked the conservative members of the General Council of the Judiciary to follow in the footsteps of its president, Carlos Lesmes, and resigned to facilitate the appointment of the two magistrates of the Constitutional Court It should have been a month ago. The chairman of the parliamentary group, James Asenshas accused the conservative sector of the body of judges of having a “seditious behavior” and has demanded a reform in the election of the CGPJ that reduces majorities and makes the votes of the Popular Party are unnecessary.
In an interview on RNE, the leader of the comuns has shown himself “pessimistic” about the possibility of an agreement between PSOE and Podemos to appoint the judicial leadership at the meeting scheduled for this Monday by Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Asens considers that the interest of the popular is that the “situation is not resolved until the PP does not reach the Government.” In this sense, he has directly advocated “a reform that allows a renewal of the CGPJ without the PPwith the plurality of Congress that is broader than that represented by the PP”.
Asens insists on the request defended in recent months by the purple ones that passes through modify the necessary majorities to renew the body of judges and that an absolute majority suffice for their appointment, instead of the current three-fifths. This would allow reaching a renewal agreement without the need for an agreement with the PP.
In October 2020, PSOE and United We Can register a text in the Congress of Deputies to modify the majority in this regard and reduce it to 176 votes, but finally the Socialists gave up and only carried out, a few months later, the reform that limits the appointments of the CGPJ, to prevent conservative judges from being appointed in the judicial leadership.
For the president of the United We Can parliamentary group, the departure of Lesmes means “a slap in the face to the rest of the members of the PP who are blatantly breaking the law”. He was thus referring to the judges who have declared themselves in absentia in recent weeks and have made it difficult to elect the two members of the Constitutional Court that the CGPJ must elect so that the Executive can do what own with the other two that correspond to them, so that a progressive majority would be achieved in the High Constitutional Court.
Although the Government promoted a rule that prohibited the appointment of judges by the judicial leadership, this summer it promoted another reform to unblock only the appointment of the members of the TC, a reform that revolted part of the CGPJ that, in protest against these movements, has blocked any appointment.
In this sense, Asens has recalled that “the law requires the appointment of the two members of the TC and the term has expired”, and has launched a petition: “Either they comply with the law or, if they want to continue with their seditious behavior, They must resign, which is what the progressive members are asking for“.