The second plenary session of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) held on an extraordinary basis to achieve the two magistrates of the Constitutional Court that correspond to them has finally achieved the necessary consensus to comply with this obligation, and the new members of the guarantee body will be Cesar Tolosa and Maria Luisa Segoviano.
The agreement has been possible when a unanimous vote was reached and the eight progressive members opted for the candidacies proposed by the majority members, all of them appointed at the proposal of the PP. The candidate initially supported by this group, Supreme Court magistrate Jose Manuel Bandres, It has finally been ruled out, sources from the governing body of the judges have pointed out to this newspaper.
The plenary session this Tuesday, called urgently last Thursday, coinciding with the Christmas Lottery and the start, for many, of the holidays, began on time, at half past four in the afternoon, and withn the assistance of the 18 members that make up this body today, and just twenty minutes later an agreement had already been reached. Eight of counselors attended telematically from their places of origin. They are Carmen Llombart, José Antonio Ballestero, Pilar Sepúlveda, Gerardo Martínez Tristán, Enrique Lucas, Juan Manuel Fernández, Roser Bach and Ángeles Carmona.
So far, the balance of forces in the CGPJ -with 8 progressive members and 10 conservatives-– had made the agreement impossible. In the December 20 vote, the two nominees then by the majority sector, Tolosa and Pablo Lucas, obtained 10 votes, while Bandrés obtained only seven because the member appointed at the proposal of the PNV Enrique Lucas, who usually votes with the group of progressives, he withdrew to avoid participating in a process in which his brother was directly involved.
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After successive decisions that had been blocking the agreement, the conservative wing changed its strategy as soon as it learned of the plans of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, aimed at theachieve a legal change that allows lowering the majority currently in force to appoint the magistrates of the Constitutional Court, with the aim of circumventing said reform. The changes urged by the Executive were introduced through amendments to the penal reform that was being processed in the Cortes and were paralyzed by an unprecedented decision of the guarantee body itself on the 19th, although the Executive announced that it would opt for other ways to promote it.
In this point, the conservatives opted to include a progressive name in their tandem (first Lucas and now Segoviano) which is the one that finally obtained the unanimous approval) for their counterparts to resign Bandrés, a magistrate on whom the conservatives have imposed a tacit veto considering him close to the government.