The president of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Vicente Guilarte, has warned Parliament and politicians that “no judge” can be summoned to testify to any commission of inquiry to justify their jurisdictional procedure. In this way, he responds to the agreement between the PSOE and Junts in which the possibility of summoning judges to find out if there has been ‘lawfare’ in judicial proceedings against the Catalan independence movement was opened.
Guilarte has warned that “initiating this path would imply a clash that seems brutal between powers of the State necessarily called for mutual respect, never confrontation.” This was what the president of the body of judges pronounced during the ceremony of the 18th Awards from the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence of the CGPJ.
Guilarte wanted to speak out after the direct accusations against judges made in Congress and the Senate by Junts spokespersons and which prompted the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, to suspend a planned meeting with the Minister of Justice, Félix Bolaños.
The head of the Justice portfolio has tried to disassociate himself from the statements of the independence party but within the judiciary there is deep discomfort with the party that holds the Government and led by Pedro Sánchez for signing an investiture agreement with the formation of Carles Puigdemont putting the focus on the existence of judicial persecution against the Catalan independence movement.
Guilarte has delved into the “devastating effect” of the “frequent and unfair attempts to delegitimize the Judiciary”, sometimes carried out by “representatives of public powers for whom the ephemeral platform at their disposal facilitates diatribes”, such as “ we saw on Tuesday in Congress and the Senate.”
The member, acting president, has looked to the Government to demand that it not be complicit in these statements: “no power of the State can be complicit in these campaigns either with their attitudes or with their silences.” “Please reduce the tension. Leave us alone,” Guilarte added.
However, Guilarte has also asked for restraint from the judiciary regarding criticism of the amnesty law, mainly expressed by some of the judicial associations and from the conservative bloc of the body he presides over. “Let us also assume our neutrality, often distorted, since judicial independence is bidirectional: not to their interference in ours, but not to ours in theirs either.”
“My call, once again, is to dilute the tension, to isolate ourselves from political confrontation and to call for an adequate renewal of the CGPJ that, it is appropriate to emphasize, promotes the future independence of the next Council,” he concluded.
