The members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) agreed this Thursday on a text in which they unanimously recognized the work of former president Carlos Lesmes, but due to their first decisions it does not seem that they are going to follow in the footsteps of his legacy. On the one hand, they have chosen the oldest member, Rafael Mozo, as a substitute, against the wish of his former boss to be automatically replaced by the President of Civil Matters of the Supreme Court; to which is added the reactivation of negotiations to renew the constitutional Court (CT) that had so far failed despite their calls for consensus.
The members of the PP and the PSOE agreed to reactivate the negotiating commission that had blown up on October 6 due to the inability shown to reach a consensus that would allow the appointment of the two magistrates of the guarantee body that corresponds to them by quota and that they should have done by law before last September 13.
The vocals Álvaro Cuesta and Roser Bach on behalf of the progressive sector (Mozo is removed from this group, given his status as alternate president) and Carmen Llombart and José Antonio Ballestero, on behalf of the conservative groupwill immediately set a new calendar of meetings, although Thursday’s plenary session concluded without specific dates for a new rapprochement.
Open door or toast to the sun?
In the opinion of some members, the decision is nothing more than “a toast to the sun”, while others do now see a possibility of consensus having reactivated the political negotiations for the renewal of the CGPJ itself by the PSOE and the PP, according to the sources consulted. The agreement, they say, can be reached jointly. In addition, now one less vote is required, and it is enough for eleven members to agree on some names for the appointments to be successful.
On October 6, Lesmes confirmed the failure of the negotiating commission up to that date, after several meetings ended in nothing due to the blockade established by the conservative partwho claimed not to find candidates despite the fact that the progressives had put on the table a list of nine Supreme Court magistrates of all sensitivities.
At that time, Lesmes’s plans involved convincing one of the eight members who formed the hard core of the conservative sector to join the progressives until reaching the 12 votes necessary at that time to reach the three-fifths of a reinforced majority. that the law requires. Now, the agreement seems closer, although we will have to wait for the development of the new meetings, which also has no fixed date at the moment.
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It is also not yet known if the nine names on the table remain as possible new magistrates of the TC. Among them are the president of the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court, María Luisa Segoviano; the magistrate in charge of controlling the CNI and speaker of the sentence that took Franco out of the Valley of the Fallen, Pablo Lucas, and Rafael Fernández Valverde, the latter a member of the current CGPJ who left his place in March after retiring.
The list is completed with magistrates of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber José Manuel Bandrés – who sounds among the favorites along with Lucas– Y Angeles Huet; the President of the Military Chamber, Jacobo López Barja de Quiroga; and also the magistrates of the Supreme Eduardo Espín, Isabel Perelló and Rosa María Virolés.