“Technical” aspects of the rule are still being polished with the aim of closing it before the investiture.
The text of the amnesty law, which is expected to be registered next Monday in Congress, will not include cases of corruption. Although “technical” aspects are still being polished, of the rule with the aim of closing it in the next few hours, the PSOE partners also assume that they will not talk about ‘lawfare’ about the supposed judicial dirty war against the independence movement. This is deduced from the groups that have not directly negotiated the amnesty for the messages that are being transmitted to them from the PSOE, waiting to receive the final text.
These parliamentary partners had shown reluctance to sign in the text after there was speculation about Junts’ intention to include cases not directly linked to the ‘procés’. Even ERC advanced that it would review the text agreed with the post-convergents to avoid the extreme of covering cases that “are not part of the independence process”. However, and despite the messages received in the last few hours from the socialists, both the PNV, EH Bildu and BNG are waiting to know the final text to make a statement.
The acting Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, limited this Friday the scope of the law “to all people with criminal, administrative or accounting cases derived from or linked to the sovereignty process.” From 2012 to 2023. In an interview in La Sexta, the person in charge of handling this matter with the parliamentary partners, specified regarding the ‘lawfare’ that “whatever is within the sovereignty process will be amnestied and “Not that he is out. That has to be decided by a judge, we have nothing to say.”
From Ferraz they explain that the ‘lawfare’ will depend on the conclusions of two commissions of investigation in Congress agreed with the independentistas. still unconstituted and will contain legislative recommendations in case of analyzing and detecting cases of use of judicial procedures for the purposes of political persecution. This is the framework of the political agreement signed last Thursday between PSOE and Junts.
“The conclusions of the investigation commissions that will be established in the next legislature [sobre el ‘caso Pegasus’, las llamadas “cloacas del Estado” y los atentados del 17A] will be taken into account in the application of the amnesty law to the extent that situations may arise that fall within the concept of ‘lawfare’ or judicialization of politics, with the consequences that, where appropriate, may give rise to liability actions or legislative modifications”, states the agreement. It was thus suggested that the ‘lawfare’ would not be part of the amnesty law, but that its application would be studied after the measure was registered and approved in Congress.
Judges’ rejection
All associations of judges, both progressive and conservative, have attacked in a joint statement against the inclusion of this reference in the political agreement, but not in the text of the amnesty. According to them, “the inadmissible references, which are both semantic and substantive, to ‘lawfare’ contained in the agreement signed between the PSOE and Junts with the purpose of facilitating the investiture and, especially, in the face of the announcement of the eventual constitution of commissions parliamentary investigations that can determine what are ambiguously called derived ‘responsibilities'” Of this, “we echo and share the outright rejection of such initiatives.”
The socialists have responded that the agreement “does not provide for the creation of investigative commissions with the objective of detecting cases of ‘lawfare’.” Likewise, they advance that “Parliament is not going to carry out, in any case, a review of any sentence or judicial resolution” nor that it is not going to supervise the judges. “That It is not what was agreed nor could it have been agreed”, they argue. The intention of the socialists, which the rest of the investiture allies share, is for the amnesty to be impeccable from the point of view of legal security, both to have green light from the Constitutional Courtso that it is not a drain for causes not directly related to the independence ‘procés’.
The PSOE hopes that all the partners of the investiture bloc, except for the Canarian Coalition, sign the bill. They do not guarantee at the moment that they can send the text this Saturday for analysis, but they do set a deadline of Sunday night to be able to register the law on Monday.
Meeting of the Congress Board
If this calendar is met, the Junts bases would vote in internal consultation to validate the investiture agreement with the PSOE without yet knowing the wording of the amnesty law. The president of Congress, Francina Armengol, plans to announce on Monday the date of the investiture plenary session for the next November 15 and 16.
The agreement with the independentistas is that the norm is qualified before investiture. Start your processing as an advance payment. The president of Congress has called a meeting of the Board next Tuesday morning in which the law could be qualified.