The president of the General Council of the Judiciary, Vicente Guilarte, sent this Tuesday to the presidencies of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate his proposal to modify the system of appointments of government positions in the Judiciary and judges of the Supreme Court.
The proposal, sent in a personal capacity and which does not represent the opinion of the governing body of the judges, aims to contribute to unblocking the renewal of the CGPJ by offering an “intermediate formula.”
On the one hand, it allows overcoming the division between the parliamentary or corporate model of electing the members of the institution and, on the other, “dilutes once and for all the interference of other powers over its actions, which are necessarily independent,” he said. Guilarte announced in a press release.
In his 17-page letter to the Cortes, Guilarte harshly attacks the political class and its lack of understanding to renew the CGPJ, which has been in office for 5 years, and warns of the “change of cards” that would entail the 122 appointments it has This body is pending, and which it cannot carry out because it is in office, if it is renewed with the current parliamentary election system.
Remember that the dispute is based on the fact that the Government party believes it is essential to persist in the parliamentary election model, while for “its opponent it must be replaced – to this end the European recommendations are argued – by a strictly corporate election of the twelve members of judicial extraction”.
“I warn for this reason,” says Guilarte, “that, as the only possibility of understanding, we must offer intermediate formulas with which to temper the absurd diversity that paralyzes the renewal, in order to achieve both the main objective of renewing the CGPJ and of diluting it once and for all. for all the interference of other powers on their actions, which are necessarily independent”.
“The need to renew the CGPJ – he adds – arises from the fact that we continue to act internally with a subliminal tendency towards continuity, frequently devoid of any legitimation. Very recently, such a reality has manifested itself, in irresponsible terms in my opinion, with the renewal of the leadership of the Judicial School when I understand that this change should have been undertaken, if applicable, by the new CGPJ”.
Guilarte, who has announced his intention to leave office this summer, believes that his proposal would have “a relevant collateral advantage by weakening the tribal political acrimony that has led to dramatic disagreements like the one that afflicts us,” and would also “serve to recompose the battered relations between the Powers of the State”.
It is about limiting “the inevitable current discretion, effectively referring the appointments to be carried out by the CGPJ to the constitutional principles of merit and capacity.” It would be done by modifying “both the selection formula for government positions and appointments to the High Court.”
The voters should be all members of the Judicial Career of the respective territory, that is, those over whom the Court, Court or Chamber has governmental powers, and the candidates must present an action program on the improvement of the body, if applicable. , explains Guilarte.
“And although it is a longer topic, perhaps it is time to design the judicial career, that is, the cursus honorum that allows us to know a priori what the merits are to be valued to access the leadership of the Judiciary. A topic until now given to a relative discretion of the CGPJ”, he also proposes.
It also alerts about the 122 pending appointments by the CGPJ, which has limited that function as it has not been renewed.
With the current system, he warns, “the huge number of vacant positions would inevitably lead to the reviled ‘change of cards’, in accordance with ‘political’ criteria, disturbing the perception of those so appointed as independent.”
That is why he advocates for a change in the renewal of the CGPJ, “so that once the CGPJ was renewed, the appointment of all vacant discretionary positions could proceed under the new parameters of objectivity.”
“The political commitment,” he states, “at the time of renewal, should be that the vacant positions would not be put out to tender until the ways of objectifying the discretionary appointments were arbitrated: those that I propose or any other imaginable ones.”
However, Guilarte adds, “it would seem that the bottom of the disagreement lies in the desire of the big parties to appropriate a greater share of power.”
“In my opinion, in a different way than what has been stated, what moves the big parties to persist immovably in their respective formulas is the hidden pretension, proscribed in its expression, of capturing the Vocals in order to be able to influence, they think wrongly, in future prosecutions before the jurisdictional orders with greater political relevance,” points out the president of the CGPJ.
Last December, the CGPJ reached 5 years in office due to the inability of the two parties that take turns in government, PSOE and PP, to agree on its renewal.
This anomaly, which translates into an image of decomposition of the system that delegitimizes the Judiciary before the citizens, has continued since December 4, 2018, so that its dwindling number of members – from 20 has gone to 16 due to resignations and retirements – has been in office since December 2013, when the popular Mariano Rajoy governed, and with his mandate having expired five years ago.
Three presidents have passed through the CGPJ in this decade. The last of them, Vicente Guilarte, who is provisional, has indicated an emergency exit for the labyrinth of politicization in which the magistrates find themselves.
