The socialist group registered this Saturday in Congress a request to extend the deadline for processing the Amnesty law in the Justice committee, which indicates that the negotiation with Junts per Catalunya to approve the criminal oblivion will be prolonged at least another two weeks almost certainly. It was the PP that revealed the socialists’ letter yesterday.
After Junts’ refusal to support the rule on January 30 at the plenary of the Lower House, the law returned to the previous procedure, in the commission, with a deadline of 15 days that expires the day after tomorrow to approve a new opinion . If the Bureau, as planned, grants the extension, the deadline for validating a new text will be March 7, so the law would be debated and voted on in the plenary that begins on March 12.
Last week there was a meeting in Barcelona between socialists and post-convergents to try to defuse the situation and the forces found that their positions were far apart. In this appointment, the PSOE, represented by the minister Félix Bolaños and Ferraz’s secretary of organization, Santos Cerdán, refused to touch the text that went to the plenary two weeks ago and offered as an alternative to retouch the law Criminal Prosecution. On behalf of Junts there was the general secretary, Jordi Turull, and the spokeswoman in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras. Sources from JxCat indicate these days the possibility of some socialist movement after yesterday’s Galician elections. The next few days will see if that is the case.
The post-convergents want more security and for the wording to make it clear that those investigated for terrorism and high treason in the cases being heard at the National Court, for the Democratic Tsunami protests, and at court number 1 in Barcelona, ??for the alleged Russian plot in the process, they benefit from criminal oblivion. Carles Puigdemont’s formation also asks to extend the term of the amnesty until November 2011, to ensure that those prosecuted in the Court of Auditors for the external action of the Generalitat are also protected.
These two issues are the main obstacles, although there are more elements and other actors involved in the equation. In turn, Esquerra considers that the text is already good enough and does not want any more changes. His argument is that there will never be a perfect wording.
In this sense, President Pere Aragonès asked yesterday that the law be approved this week in Congress and urged the PP to join the agreement if it wants “solutions” for Catalonia. Thus, he assured that the rule is already “solid and robust” and affirmed that “every day that passes without amnesty is a day that the repression continues”, with the situation of the minister Natàlia Garriga and the leaders of ERC Josep Maria Jové and Josep Lluís Salvadó, who in April will be tried by the 1-O, as an example.
