The Permanent Commission of the General Council of the Judiciary hagreed this Tuesday to reiterate its frontal rejection of the constitution of parliamentary investigation commissions that could reach to establish responsibilities derived from the so-called ‘lawfare’ and has warned that it will remain vigilant, in defense of judicial independencein relation to the development of these commissions, among which may include the Parliament’s requirements to the judge of the Supreme Court of the CNI, Pablo Lucas, in the case opened by espionage with Pegasus.
The holding of the meeting has been held at the request of three of the members of the conservative sector who are part of this body: Ángeles Carmona, Carmen Llombart and José Antonio Ballestero, after the Board of the Congress of Deputies has approved the constitution of two investigative commissions that will deal with the jihadist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils in August 2017 and the so-called “Operation Catalonia”. The three have voted against the agreement reached, considering it insufficient.
The agreement consists of the one signed on November 9 with a paragraph in which it is added that the CGPJ will be vigilant regarding the parliamentary committees that are held and has been approved with the casting vote of the president of the CGPJ, the member Vicente Guilarteafter this and the members appointed at the proposal of the PSOE Roser Bach and Mar Cabrejas will support the text. The member Pilar Sepúlveda has voted blank.
This body already ruled on the alleged existence of a dirty judicial war against the independence movement on November 9, after learning of the agreement signed between PSOE and Junts that included the term ‘lawfare’ and alluded to the work of certain investigative commissions in the Congress. On that occasion, the members charged against the “the inadmissible references” to the judicialization of politics and shared their “frontal rejection” to these allusions in line with what was expressed in the same sense by all the associations of judges and prosecutors.
The added paragraph now establishes that “the General Council of the Judiciary will remain vigilant, in defense of judicial independence, in relation to the development of the aforementioned parliamentary investigation commissions.”
New responsibility of judges
In their dissenting vote, the members who proposed holding the Permanent Assembly consider that the agreement agreed with the casting vote of the acting president against the parliamentary commissions falls short, because With its creation “it is intended, ultimately, (…) to generate a new type of responsibility for judges and magistrates, which would no longer be only the legal -criminal, civil or disciplinary- but also political responsibility, contrary to the model of the constitutional judge, independent as subject only to the rule of Law”.
The dissidents refer to some statements by the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont, whom they call a “fugitive from justice” in which he compares the inclusion of ‘lawfare in the agreement with the PSOE with the horse’s head in the film ‘The Godfather’. ‘: “The term ‘lawfare’ is like the horse’s head in The Godfather: it’s a warning that we’re serious.”
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Also the statements of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, that the non-renewal of the CGPJ is ‘lawfare’ or the statements of the Minister of Transport: “This is like the meigas; one may not believe in them, but there are some.”
In his opinion, “this whole set of statements, the creation of investigation commissions into fraud of law, or the filing of surprising complaints They create and prepare an inadmissible and unjustified climate of agitation and propaganda against judges and magistrates. which, however, have limited themselves to applying, with the guarantees of a fair trial according to the highest standards of the Rule of Law, laws, such as the current Penal Code, approved by the Cortes Generales born from the Spanish Constitution.”