The deputy of Junts LluÃs Puig, who until now had been able to vote in plenary sessions of the Parliament through a decision of the Board by which his vote was counted verbally but was not reflected on the electronic panel, will be able to continue exercising this right through the formula of “transitory telematic vote”.
Once the decision of the Bureau that allowed Puig to vote from Brussels was annulled by the Constitutional Court, in the plenary session that begins tomorrow the question arose as to what would happen to his vote, since the first vice president acting as president, Alba Vergés, he could incur in disobedience if he continued to apply the procedure used up to now. In the end, Vergés has found an alternative way: for Puig to send her the meaning of her vote by email and she will also add to the calculation.
This afternoon ERC, the group to which Vergés belongs, has brought this solution to the Table, which it has presented as “transitory”, until the modification of the regulation that the Republicans promote together with the CUP becomes effective. The pro-independence majority (four representatives) has prevailed over the two socialist members of the governing body, who have expressed their rejection of the initiative, which they consider an ad hoc modification of the rules, and have defended that the ruling of the Constitutional Court is “very clear” about it.
Specifically, ERC proposes a temporary telematic vote for Puig as a way to “effectively guarantee the rights” of the Junts deputy, “exiled because of the Spanish repression.” The Republicans understand that in this way “new legal frameworks are explored to overcome the courts, in the same way that was done with the new Catalan law before the imposition of 25% of Castilian”.
In the communiqué issued by the Republicans prior to the meeting of the Mesa, it is explained that this proposal is temporary and is proposed as a “new mechanism” that allows, based on article 4.2 of the Parliament regulations, that guarantees the right to vote in the plenary sessions and the commissions, that Puig can continue voting from Brussels “given the impossibility of doing it in any other effective way.”
Specifically, the same mechanism established by the European Parliament during the pandemic is established, through which MEPs could vote by email after verifying that the sender was the one who sent the email. However, the deputies who want to use this modality in the Parliament will have to request it and justify the exceptional causes of special gravity for which they request it with a letter addressed to the Bureau.
ERC has reached this solution, which the Socialists reject because they do not believe it is possible to equate the situation of the Junts deputy, who fled from Spanish justice in Belgium, with the covid pandemic, given the inaction of Junts, the group to which Puig belongs , which had not requested a new delegation of vote or any additional action after the Constitutional Court ruling last week, for which the Republicans had accused the post-convergents of blocking.
Thus, the president of the Junts parliamentary group, Albert Batet, who in the morning had stated from Sant Boi de Llobregat that his group would be “attentive to the decisions of the Table” and would act to “guarantee the will of the deputies” , in the afternoon, from the Parliament press room, welcomed Vergés’s initiative, which has the approval of Puig himself. “Persisting gives results,” said Batet, who has celebrated that Puig can vote tomorrow electronically. “We have been defending it for years, we value the rectification of ERC,” explained the Junts spokesman.
“It is the second measure that ERC proposes – read its statement – to tangibly defend the vote of this Junts deputy”, since last week the Republicans, together with the CUP, registered a proposal for a partial reform of the regulation of the Parliament that incorporated telematic voting and new assumptions of delegation that sought to be approved in a single reading and that, however, has not yet been debated and has not arrived on time.
In this sense, ERC accuses Junts of “throwing down” its reform proposal in the board of spokespersons, “thus delaying a useful tool to guarantee the rights of the deputy.” Thus, the Republicans have proposed this second path “to build a consensus and confront the State and judicial interference.” “It is what everyone should do, look for ways to confront the State instead of dividing the independence movement,” insisted the ERC spokesperson, Marta Vilalta.
