The opposition parties together with the conservative bloc of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) launched a general offensive yesterday to stop Pedro Sánchez’s plans for the renewal of the Constitutional Court, just as Congress votes today on the modification of its election system .
Under the slogan that the amendment to the law is a frontal attack on the rule of law, the PP took a step forward yesterday and asked the Constitutional Court to prevent the vote. In parallel, the conservative block of the CGPJ intends to force an extraordinary plenary session to avoid having to apply the reform, which if there are no unforeseen events will be definitively approved next week in the Senate.
The first to pronounce will have to be the Constitutional itself. The Núñez Feijóo party requested yesterday that the agreements adopted for the processing of these reforms be annulled. To this end, he demanded that very precautionary measures be adopted to prevent the reform of the law from being voted on, which makes it unnecessary to have a three-fifth majority of the members of the body of judges to elect the Constitutional magistrates and removes the court from guarantees the power to give conformity to the suitability of the chosen magistrates.
The president of the court, Pedro González-Trevijano – with his mandate expired since June – yesterday called an extraordinary and urgent plenary session for this morning with the aim of analyzing the appeal presented by the PP, under the presentation of the conservative Enrique Arnaldo. Government sources strongly criticize this decision and see in this decision an attempt by the Constitutional Court to interfere without power. Within the body there are also discrepancies on how and when this matter should be resolved. The PP plan is that the reform cannot even be voted on. Precisely, one of the parts that affect the reform is the suppression of the placet that the candidates to the TC must pass before their official appointment as magistrates. Given the notices of the conservative majority of the court that there would be no placet if the Government appointed two magistrates without waiting for the two that the CGPJ must appoint, the Executive opted to reform the norm. For the Socialists, there is an interest of the conservative block of the Judiciary to avoid the appointments and maintain their majorities.
Parallel to the movement of the PP and the TC, the conservative members of the governing body of the judges once again demanded from their acting president, Rafael Mozo, an extraordinary plenary session to appoint their two magistrates for the Constitutional Court, after he had already rejected a previous request in this sense on Tuesday because it was not accompanied by the name and curriculum of the candidates. Yesterday they solved it so as not to leave room for maneuver for Mozo, who must now speak again.
Until then, the conservatives had avoided putting names on the table, but their strategy was blown up with the changes proposed via an amendment to the Penal Code reform by the PSOE and UP. Now they want to force a plenary session before these modifications come into force to prevent the candidate of the progressives, José Manuel Bandrés, from coming out ahead.
Until now, the candidates can only be appointed by a majority of three fifths, which forces the two blocks to agree to come up with two names. The reform allows there to be a simple majority – the one with the most votes comes out – and also prevents a member from voting for more than one candidate. With this change, the progressives would get Bandrés elected.
And therein lies the reason for the maneuvers of the conservatives. What they have done has been to present two candidates, César Tolosa and Pablo Lucas, both magistrates of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court – the first is the current president of the chamber. Lucas is progressive, and with that what they are looking for is for him to be elected instead of Bandrés, on suspicion that the latter is the government candidate. Based on current balances within the Council, the Conservatives only need one progressive member to join Lucas’s choice.
