The tranquility has not just reached the General Council of the Judiciary. After the tsunami after the resignation of its president Carlos Lesmes last Monday, there are now signs that there will be a new front on the election of his replacement.
A member of the body, Wenceslao Olea (magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court) has brought an appeal to his own Chamber to prevent the member Rafael Mozo from being appointed as a substitute for Lesmes.
The decision that it was this one who assumed the presidency of the CGPJ was endorsed last Thursday in plenary session by 16 members. Only Olea voted against and the member María del Mar Cabrejas, who opted out of the vote on the understanding that it could be illegal.
The reason raised by the conservative Olea is that Mozo’s election is against the law and that “bicephaly cannot exist” in the Judiciary. In his opinion, “there can only be a single president” of the Supreme Court and of the governing body of the judges, so “there can be no bicephaly in the current legal system.”
Practically all the members, both conservative and progressive, understood that to preside over the CGPJ the oldest member should assume it until there is a renewal of the CGPJ, whose negotiations are still open by the PSOE and PP despite the four years that it has been blocked.
For the majority of the Council, its president must be Mozo while the presidency of the Supreme must be assumed by the most senior magistrate of the court, that is, Francisco Marín.
But this thesis is contrary to that raised by the technical cabinet in a report requested by Lesmes before his resignation. The text established that, by law, Marín had to assume the presidency of the two bodies because whoever is president of the Supreme Court is also president of the CGPJ.
Before the decision of the plenary session last Thursday, Olea raised a particular vote. However, this Monday he went a step further and filed a contentious-administrative appeal before the Supreme Court in which he has demanded that Mozo’s election as president be stopped as a precautionary measure.
Now, the Contentious Chamber has 48 hours to resolve the issue. In the court that analyzes it, its president, César Tolosa, will not be able to be present, because he is part of the Governing Chamber of the high court, which a few days ago validated the report of the technical cabinet and, therefore, gave the go-ahead for Marín to be the president of the two organs.
Meanwhile, Marín, already as president of the Supreme Court, will preside tomorrow the swearing-in ceremony of Dolores Delgado as prosecutor of the Robed Prosecutor’s Chamber of the high court.
