Will Justice be a newly created ministry? The irony comes from an event: the appointment of the Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños, as Minister of Justice, has promoted the activity of a portfolio that was not and was not expected, come on, almost non-existent in recent years. Step by step, in a matter of days, Bolaños is becoming more and more Minister of Justice than Minister of the Presidency.
Bolaños was not completely alien to Justice, given his role in the negotiations for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) with Teodoro García Egeanumber two Pablo Casadowith whom he practically reached an agreement to proceed with the appointment of members with the current mixed system of associations of judges-legislative chambers – that is, the one introduced by José María Aznar and corrected by Alberto Ruiz Gallardón and Carlos Lesmes in 2013. For this, the PSOE and the PP committed, together with the renewal, to promote a commission in Congress to study other options in six months and prepare a new law that would be applied in the next renewal – that is, within five years -, but the collusion was frustrated.
Went back Bolaños to scratch the final agreement with the man appointed by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Esteban González Ponswho assured EL PERIÓDICO as soon as he was appointed that the PP “would not delay the renewal.”
But the change of the crime of sedition in the Penal Code announced by the Government of Pedro Sanchez Towards the end of October 2022, the argument for the renewal – not of the CGPJ – but of the blockade was served on a plate. Feijóo, then, was heading to La Moncloa in the elections theoretically scheduled for December 2023 or January 2024 and as President of the Government he would undertake his plan from there.
Along the way, in December 2022, the PP lost the battle to block the progressive majority in the Constitutional Court (TC) relying on the mandates of two magistrates who were appointed to the CGPJ (the president Pedro González-Trevijanoalready with mandate expired in 2022) and Antonio Narvaez (appointed at the proposal of the PP to replace in 2014 Enrique Lopezwho resigned for being caught jumping a traffic light on his motorcycle in the center of Madrid with four times the permitted blood alcohol level at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 1, 2014), also with his mandate expired in 2022.
The asset of the Valladolid woman Maria Luisa Segovianojudge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, proposed by the so-called progressive sector of the CGPJ to join the TC was a goal that the acting president scored Rafael Mozo to the leader of the ultra and recalcitrant sector of the CGPJ, José María Macías, fucking him ‘in alvis’. The majority could not be aborted as the partner of the Cuatrecasas Macías law firm intended. The strong man in the instruction of the process behind the scenes – from the judge Juan Antonio Martínez Sunyerhead of the investigating court number 13 of Barcelona, and the magistrate Pablo Llarena in the Supreme Court – did not hide his irritation.
Pressure to normalize the situation
The entrance of Núñez Feijóo in La Moncloa suggests a change of fronts. The PP has strained the use of its ultra-conservative majority in the CGPJ too much. Although this tension had as its horizon the victory of Núñez Feijóo and, therefore, it seemed possible to hold on “a little longer”, the situation is different with the new coalition government. Núñez Feijóo He is now suffering more pressure from his own judicial career – eager for appointments to the courts, starting with the Supreme Court – to normalize the situation. But both the debate on the amnesty law and the Galician, Basque and European elections seem to lead the president of the PP to postpone any negotiations until after the summer of 2024, although then the regional election in Catalonia will also appear on the immediate horizon (until on February 14, 2025). The rivalry with Vox also prevents him from being a negotiator with the PSOE, behavior that can be seen in how he drags his feet before the proposal to meet with Pedro Sanchez in La Moncloa.
Bolaños He knows that the renewal of the CGPJ, due to the indicated calendar, will take long months and according to reliable sources he is working in that direction. Try to welcome the distancing of the acting president of the CGPJ, Vicente Guilarte, who considers that his main contribution to the crisis is to promote renewal. Or at least lay the foundation for it.
Although the media captured headlines last week, the exhortation of Guilarte to the legislative power – “Leave us alone”, pointing to Junts’ attacks in Congress when the amnesty law proposal was being debated -, judicial sources point out that the “other part” of his speech was perhaps even more suggestive. “That one in the one in which the chief of judges, so to speak, tells his people not to put on a show,” said the source.
Balance speech
In effect, Guilarte made a balanced speech. “And from within let us also assume our often distorted neutrality, since judicial independence is bidirectional: not to their interference in ours, but not ours in theirs either. I mention it because without a doubt, these episodes have a devastating effect by undermining citizens’ confidence in Justice and, in the case of victims of gender violence, they contribute to increasing the feeling of lack of protection. “No power of the State can be complicit in these campaigns either with their attitudes or with their silences.”
This idea that independence is “bidirectional” It is the grain of sand that it intends to contribute Guilarte. Precisely, this Monday, December 18, Bolaños returned to him, at the ceremony of handing over the offices of new prosecutors, in the auditorium of the Complutense University of Madrid, which he shared with Guilarte and the state attorney general, Alvaro Garcia, the Government’s commitment to “always defend the judges.” The minister added: “In democracy, the playing field is the institutions and we must all maintain that institutionality and loyalty to the democratic system. “All without exception.”
Related news
The behavior of Guilarteon the other hand, seems to differ from that of the acting president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marin Castan, who after the attacks in Congress, canceled a scheduled meeting with Bolaños, which has been postponed to this Thursday, December 21. Judicial sources indicate that Marin Castan, who presides over the governing room of the Supreme Court, which is made up of the presidents of all the rooms. is in a land hostile to the Government and, perhaps for this reason, has had to make a gesture of reproach to it, even though no one from the Government has participated in the attacks on Supreme Court magistrates.
Bolaños will play a firefighter once again this Thursday in the Justice Commission. As for the eight unconditional members of the PP in the CGPJ, they already know that they cannot count on Guilarte for openly and manifestly partisan operations.