The plenary session of the Constitutional Court has decided to continue with the meeting on Monday given the complexity of the matter after an hour and a half of debate, according to court sources explained to La Vanguardia. The plenary session had been called urgently to study the very precautionary measures requested by the PP to paralyze the processing of the reform of the judiciary, which, among other points, modifies the voting system of the magistrates of the guarantee court, in addition to to reduce the crime of embezzlement and sedition. Initially it was scheduled to start at 10 but it has been delayed to study new writings presented.
According to sources of the organ, the plenary session was delayed to be able to study the new writings presented. One of them is the personification of the PSOE and another of Unidas Podemos that includes the challenges of the president of the court, Pedro González Trevijano and the magistrate Antonio Narváez, in addition to a new appeal from Vox. The eleven magistrates that make up the court are present in plenary – there is a vacancy after the resignation of a magistrate for health reasons.
These two magistrates find their mandate expired and they are the two that had to be replaced by the Government. For this reason, in one of the letters they request that they withdraw from the vote on the appeal that the PP has presented regarding the reform of the law on the judiciary that is being voted on today in the Congress of Deputies.
The reason is that once the reform proposed by the Socialists is approved, the two pending appointments to the TC by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) will be unblocked practically automatically. With the current law, a three-fifths majority of the members of the body is needed to carry out the two appointments and for now the conservative bloc had no intention of giving those names the green light.
As long as the CGPJ does not approve both of its own, the Government cannot do the same because the Constitution establishes that the renewal of the TC must be done by thirds, that is, four by four magistrates, every three years.
With the reform, only a simple majority will be needed, so the progressives will not need the conservatives to approve the two names.
In parallel, the president of the General Council of the Judiciary, Rafael Mozo, has called an extraordinary plenary session for the 20th to vote on the two candidates proposed by the conservative block as magistrates to the Constitutional Court.
This is a consequence of the same controversy. After learning of the presentation of the reform by the Socialists in Congress, the conservative bloc of the Council changed its strategy.
Now he wants to force an extraordinary plenary session to study the vote of two magistrates of the TC before the reform is approved. In this case, the explanation for this haste is that the conservatives on the Council want to veto the candidate of the progressives, Supreme Court magistrate José Manuel Bandrés, considering that he is a person close to the Government.
That is why what they have done is present two candidates, César Tolosa and Pablo Lucas, both magistrates of the Supreme Court. Lucas is a progressive and what they are looking for is for a member of the other block to decline for this magistrate, on the other hand a favorite of a part of the progressives.
