The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, has challenged all the judges of the Supreme Court who have to decide whether or not he continues to be the head of the Public Ministry.
Fiscal sources inform various agencies and media that the attorney general has filed an incident of recusal against the five magistrates of the Fourth Section of the Administrative Litigation Chamber, who have yet to resolve an appeal from the Professional and Independent Association of Prosecutors (APIF) against his appointment as head of the State Attorney General’s Office.
These are the same magistrates who last November handed down a ruling that overturned the appointment of the former State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, as the Supreme Court prosecutor, by accusing García Ortiz of “diversion of power” since “her purpose was “ensure Dolores Delgado’s promotion to the highest category of the tax career.”
This is why the Attorney General understands that these magistrates may not be objective in determining whether or not they continue to lead the institution, once the General Council of the Judiciary considered them “suitable” for the position precisely because, among other issues, , that Supreme Court ruling.
In addition to these reasons, García Ortiz adds references such as the case of Judge José Luis Requero, who the day after that ruling against Delgado signed an article in La Razón in which he said that “just look at what is already a Constitutional Court and a grief-stricken State Attorney General’s Office,” the sources add.
Therefore, he requests that his case be reviewed by other magistrates who do not have rulings or references against him, as he understands is happening now with this section of the Litigation Chamber.
The resolution corresponds to the so-called Chamber of 61, a special chamber of the Supreme Court whose name comes from article 61 of the Organic Law of the Judiciary, which includes its creation. Among its powers is that of studying, as the law itself says, “incidents of recusal of the president of the Supreme Court or the presidents of Chambers, or of more than two magistrates of a Chamber”, as is the case in this same case.
With the president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, at its head, the Chamber of 61 is made up of each of the presidents of the five chambers of the High Court and the oldest and most modern magistrate of each of them.
The APIF filed a contentious administrative appeal in the Supreme Court against the appointment of García Ortiz, considering that his actions and his “partiality” in favor of the Government show that his appointment does not comply with the law.
García Ortiz, they denounce, “has shown himself blatantly partial in his support for the Government, while at the same time he has omitted any obligation due to the Institution, its prosecutors and disrespecting the Fiscal Council by appropriating some of its decision-making powers.” For this reason, they consider that he “does not have the mood, the attitude, the character, or the conviction to be an Attorney General of the State and not of the Government.”
