The situation within the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) is becoming “suffocating” as recognized by some of its members. The interim position that has been in place for five years has been the seed of some internal clashes that have forced the current acting president, Vicente Guilarte, to announce his departure before August.
This member came to the presidency a year ago as he was the oldest, after the retirement of Rafael Mozo and previously the resignation of Carlos Lesmes. “I’m quite alone,” Guilarte acknowledged last week in an interview on Onda Cero. Sources from this institution explain that the final straw in this internal confrontation has been the election of the new director of the Judicial School.
Guilarte was against the person appointed by the conservative group to direct the Judicial School after the resignation of the person who held the position. The majority supported María Jesús Millán de las Heras, director of the continuing training service, based in Madrid. The president opposed it, as did the progressives, but they did not mention that one of the members of the minority group supported the conservatives.
So the new interim director of the Judicial School -based in Barcelona-, an institutional and relevant position, will be a person who does not have the confidence of the president.
The progressives were betting on the magistrate and section head of the Initial Training Service who is in the School itself, Clara Carulla.
According to sources from the organization, the conservatives have not forgiven that Guilarte – a member who comes from jurists of recognized prestige but who is not a career judge – has been a kind of loose verse. The president’s position has been to try to achieve a renewal of the body as soon as possible with an agreement between the PP and PSOE. He has also opposed the more radical position on the amnesty and cast a dissenting vote on the conservative group’s report on this law, and voted in favor of the appointment of Álvaro García as state attorney general. “I don’t see many of them very inclined to look for solutions,” Guilarte warned in that radio interview.
The president feels alone, he does not have the confidence of the members, especially his own group who expected a president closer to their shock stance. “The situation within the Council is becoming very complicated. People are not for consensus, they only go to confrontation,” acknowledges one of the members. The president feels disempowered and has therefore already announced his upcoming departure. The next on the list would be Wenceslao Olea, member of the conservative group and magistrate of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court. However, some members still trust that after the European elections in June, PP and PSOE will reach an agreement to unblock the Council.
The main associations of judges, conservative and progressive, also called last week for the CGPJ to be renewed immediately because the situation of Justice is at its limit. Even the majority Professional Association of the Judiciary (APM), which is committed to reforming the law to change the system of electing members, has demanded that the renewal be carried out first and then the law be changed. This position goes against the thesis of the PP that refuses to renew the body due to the argument that it will not do so until there is a reform of the law so that the twelve members of the judicial career are elected by their colleagues and not by the Parlament.
Sources from the body that regulates judges see that the degree of decomposition will not last any longer. The progressive group itself is weakening and consensus is now becoming impossible. Some of its members are more pessimistic than others. “The Council is now motivated by personal vendettas. Nothing is negotiated. The president is not talked about and the president is systematically boycotted,” one of them acknowledges.
