Despite having been stripped of the presidency of the Parliament and of her act as a deputy as a result of the conviction for falsifying an official document and administrative prevarication, the situation of Laura Borràs still has a tail. On this occasion, the Parliament debated this Thursday on the remuneration and lifetime pensions that come with his time in the parliamentary institution, benefits set by law since 1988 that would allow him to collect 60% of his salary after his dismissal and a lifetime allowance from the age of 65.
The Catalan Chamber ended up processing, thanks to ERC, a bill of En Comú Podem that claims to leave the presidents of the Parliament and the Generalitat without these remunerations whenever they are convicted of a crime of corruption in a final sentence. And in the debate, the loneliness of Junts, a party chaired by Borràs, which alone defended the maintenance of these prerogatives, was evident.
The Parliament had on the table four bills for the PSC, the Commons and Citizens. The first, restricted to the case of the presidents of the Catalan Chamber, proposed the revocation of the norm that enables benefits and life pensions for the second institutional authority of Catalonia, establishing a transitional regime for the collection of pensions that on the day of today ex-presidents or their relatives charge. And the two presented by Ciudadanos were committed to eliminating with a stroke of the pen all the temporary allowances and life pensions of the presidents of the Government and Parliament, also suppressing them for former ministers, as well as the extra remuneration that the head of the opposition can currently receive. .
Neither of them went ahead because ERC voted in favor in both cases of the amendments to the totality presented by Junts. On the other hand, the republicans abstained in the one of the common ones.
The proposal of the group of Jéssica Albiach foresees modifying the 2003 law of the statute of the presidents of the Generalitat, a norm that includes the rights and prerogatives of the first Catalan authority -office, allowance and life pension-, in which they propose its revocation ” automatic” when the head of the Government or the president of the Parliament is convicted in a final sentence for a crime related to corruption. The objective is, therefore, to prevent Borràs or any president of the Parliament or of the Generalitat from receiving public resources if he is convicted of “personal or third-party gain, prevarication, document forgery, influence peddling or illegal party financing.”
Borràs has not yet requested the benefit to which she would be entitled after her dismissal for a maximum period of two years and which would correspond to 60% of the salary she earned -more than 150,000 euros- as president of the Chamber, so with the current law she could receive it if he requests it and it is confirmed that he has held the position for at least two years -a condition that is not clear since for a good part of that period he was suspended from rights and duties and also from salary-. In addition, in the case of Borràs there is still no final ruling because its appeal to the Supreme Court is pending.
In any case, the common law proposal has been saved and will now be debated in a presentation, where the groups will be able to present modifications and must agree on a final text. And here the contest of ERC, PSC and commons will be necessary again, fundamentally.
The Republicans justify the processing of the law of the commons because they are in favor of “protecting the institutions in cases of corruption” and are committed to “holding a deep debate in this regard” in Parliament. The meaning of the ERC vote is understood because they do not share “the detail” of the proposal of the purple formation, “but they do share the objective”.
Junts presented an amendment to all of the bills and in the debate he was very critical of the “opportunism” he sees in them. The formation deputy, Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas, defended that the laws should not be promulgated “ad hoc” or thinking of specific cases and people -in reference to Borràs-, and defended these prerogatives to “recognize” and “give prestige” to the main Catalan authorities and prevent them from ending up “begging” or asking for a non-contributory pension.
