The PSC has registered this Tuesday the bill to reform the Parliament’s regulations with which it intends to put an end to the interim situation that the Catalan Chamber is experiencing as a result of the suspension of rights and obligations of President Laura Borrà s. This is an initiative that aims to implement in the rules that govern the Catalan Chamber a kind of motion of censure against the members of the governing bodies of the institution with which to remove Borrà s from office and elect, at the same time, his substitute.
The leader of Junts is suspended from rights and obligations but maintains the seat and the status of president of Parliament. With the socialist initiative, it is intended to establish the conditions under which a member of the Parliamentary Committee -Borràs continues to be the president of the governing body although she does not exercise as such- or of the parliamentary committee tables can be expelled from office .
With this reform, Borrà s would not lose her status as a deputy, something that can only be done by the Electoral Board or the plenary session of the Catalan Chamber in a vote, but it would allow a fifth of the deputies or two parliamentary groups to present a sort of motion of no confidence in the president. Thus, by voting in plenary session and by an absolute majority, the “loss of confidence” in her could be verified and, therefore, she could be stripped of the position of president of the Parliament definitively.
The PSC-Units bill aims to fill a “legal vacuum†that other regional parliamentary regulations do, regarding the possibility of removing members of the governing body of the Parliament or its political commissions from office. That is why it translates into the introduction of two specific articles in the section on the election of the members of the Bureau (articles 44 to 59 of the Parliament’s regulations).
The socialist proposal introduces an addition to article 45, on the system of election of the members of the Bureau, to establish the reasons for the “loss of status as a member of the Bureau of Parliament.” Among the reasons for losing said status would be some obvious ones, such as the loss of deputy status or express resignation, but also others hitherto unpublished, such as “ceasing to belong to the parliamentary group to which one was attached at the time of his election” -designed to combat “cases of turncoats”-, and the “removal of office agreed by the plenary session of Parliament by absolute majority”.
It is this last case that would concern Borràs and the socialist proposal explicitly includes that in order to carry it out, at least a fifth of the deputies or two parliamentary groups must consider that its debate and vote must be held in the plenary session following its admission. to process, and that will have immediate effects, so that in the same plenary session his replacement should be chosen. In this way, the PSC would speed up the replacement in the position of the presidency of the Parliament, before which they reserve the possibility of presenting their own candidate who could count on the support of minority parties such as Ciutadans.
“It is surprising that we have a specific way to remove the president of the executive branch from office and not for the members of the Parliamentary Bureau, including its president,” they justify in the PSC when defending the reform.
But in the proposal there is a clear political component. To be approved, an absolute majority would be required and PSC has two ways to do this, have ERC and some other group or only the rest of the minority groups (En Comú Podem, PP, Ciudadanos and Vox). In this way, the ball is in ERC’s court.
The Socialists would like this initiative to be approved as soon as possible. To do this, they ask for its approval by single reading and have already established some contacts with the rest of the parliamentary groups, but without going into the matter in depth. In fact, the intention is to approve this reform in less than a month, and for this they appeal to the “responsibility” of the rest of the parliamentary groups.
If next week’s Board of Spokespersons processes the socialist reform by single reading, this could end up in the plenary session from April 18 to 20 or, otherwise, in the plenary session from May 2 to 4 -a few days from beginning of the electoral campaign – when the Socialists also intend to carry out their reform on the “privileged” pensions of the presidency of the Parliament.
