The “judicial policy & rdquor; of Alberto Nuñez Feijoo is the continuation of the policy of Paul Married…by other means. And the decisive battle that is raging around the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) It is not about a “general blockade & rdquor; to the renewal of the CGPJ. What the PP does not want is to “give in & rdquor; his control over constitutional Court. Or rather: the Popular Party maintains its Numantine resistance to the renewal of the four magistrates whose nine-year terms expired on June 12, 2022, those of the president, Pedro González-Trevijano, and the vice president, Juan Antonio Xiol, and of the magistrates Antonio Narváez and Santiago Martínez-Vares.
In a conversation with this newspaper, on April 13, the new institutional deputy general secretary of the PP, in charge of Justice, Defense and Constitutional Policy, Esteban Gonzalez Ponsassured, after the evaporation of his predecessor, Enrique López (his position as secretary and public administrations of the PP under Casado was abolished) that “The PP is not going to delay the renewal of the CGPJ & rdquor ;.
the eAndalusian lessons, after those of Castilla y León, as the PP also clarified, would not be an obstacle to the renewal once Feijóo’s new team became aware of the situation. The Andalusians of June 19, in effect, were the pretext to open a new waiting period in the negotiations between the Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños, and González Pons. Then the PP’s need to contact the judges’ associations and the announcement that it would present a proposal to the government in July became new reasons to delay the negotiations.
Expired mandates
On June 12, as has been noted, the mandates of four magistrates expired. For this, the norm is that the president of the TC had to inform the Government a few months before about the need to prepare the substitution since two of those magistrates corresponded to appoint the Government.
but the president Pedro Gonzalez-Trevijano He sent to the Government that only the appointments of the four expired would be valid. The substitutes for González-Trevijano and Antonio Nárváez (conservatives) came from the time of Mariano Rajoy (2013), and it corresponded to name the new ones by Pedro Sánchez; but the other two, Xiol and Martínez-Vares, were CGPJ appointments (one progressive and one conservative). And as a Government law of 2021 prohibited the CGPJ elected in December 2013 and expired since December 2018, from making new appointments, the two that the CGPJ had to choose were not going to be able to simultaneously accompany the two appointed by the Government.
And although there is no legal rule that prevents partial appointments – quite the contrary, a 2016 TC ruling authorizes them – President González-Trevijano and his media presentation stopped, in the midst of the Andalusian election campaign, the appointments by the Government to renew two magistrates. Finally, Pedro Sánchez carried out a legal reformapproved with ehe clueless vote of Nuñez Feijóo andn the Senate, but the CGPJ threatens not to comply with it and is reluctant to appoint the two magistrates that it is now in a legal position to appoint.
The Government has announced that the September 13th, if there is no agreement to renew the CGPJ, it will comply with the law and appoint its two candidates. The president of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, Carlos Lesmeshas called a plenary session to discuss the situation on September 8, one day after the opening ceremony chaired by Felipe VI and five days before the Government appoints the two magistrates to which it is obliged.
In this context, when the magistrates will no longer resume work at the TC and prepare their bags to go on vacation, Alfredo Montoya reappears and submits his resignation.
Montoya (Madrid, 1937), professor and university professor of Labor Law and Social Security, suffered a stroke in august 2021. And since September of that year he has not participated in the activity of the Constitutional Court.
Has there been any news about your state of health? Sources consulted by El Periódico de Catalunya assure that nothing new is known about his health and that, as has been pointed out, since September 2021 he has not participated in the court’s deliberations.
parliamentary negotiation
There was a consensus, as has happened in the case of other magistrates whose vacancy occurred due to illness in 2021 (Fernando Valdés Dal Ré) or earlier, in 2015, due to death (Luis Ortega), that once the TC was renewed, with new majorities and minorities and a brand-new presidency, they would proceed, after the summer, to fill that vacancy, which depends on a parliamentary negotiation between PSOE and PP. Why? Because he must be appointed by the Senate.
But this requires a pact, because the PSOE has a majority in the Senate. The candidacy of a magistrate with the same conservative orientation as Montoya, proposed by the PP, would go ahead only if the PSOE supports it. And this has been suggested or assumed by the Socialists if the PP first signs the renewal of the TC and the CGPJ.
In other words: the debate does not turn on the renewal of five magistrates in the TC but of four. The substitute for Montoya is an unexpected situation.
But what has been an unforeseen event has been his resignation last Wednesday, July 27. And the speed with which President González-Trevijano has processed it indicates that the right has moved a piece on the board.
At the time of immediately accepting the resignation, the president has sent it to the Senate, it has been sent to the BOE for it to be published and the distribution of Montoya’s papers among the other magistrates has been consummated.
That is to say: the renewal of Montoya, when there are no deliberations in August and it is unknown what will happen with the plenary session in September, has been a movement to further condition or confuse the coverage of theas four places expired in the TC.
That square in Montoya was the one that Lesmes, in what is an open secret, was waiting to enter the TC. Because it did not depend on the CGPJ being renewed or not.
Montoya’s operation bursts in when Lesmes, as has been noted, convened a plenary session to debate compliance with the obligation of the CGPJ, after the new rule that allows you to choose the two magistrates for the TC, on September 8. That is to say, some time has been given, between September 8 and 13 – when the Government has announced the appointment of the two magistrates – to decide.
Thursday September 8 could take place a first debate on the two appointments and if there is no consensus, Lesmes would be in a position to convene a second plenary session for Monday the 12th, on the eve of the 13th, the day of the Government’s appointments, to channel the division.
The PP has attempted to build, with the help of those interested – that is, President González-Trevijano, who aspires to remain in office for as long as possible – a ‘maginot line’, a fortified wall in the TC, before a majority with a progressive presidency.
And if, finally, he cannot guarantee the full defense of that line, he tries to prepare a solution as the lesser evil: to frustrate that the presidency is for the president in chest Candido Count-Pumpido.
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