Following the planned script, the Parliamentary Committee has decided this Tuesday to present allegations before the Central Electoral Board (JEC) to defend the sovereignty of the Catalan Chamber when it comes to deciding when to withdraw the seat of Laura Borrà s, sentenced to four and a half years in prison and thirteen years of disqualification for prevarication and document falsification.
The Parliament’s regulation establishes that you have to wait for the sentence to be final to proceed to replace a deputy, and that will be the argument that the lawyers will use before the JEC so that Borrà s, who has been suspended from rights and duties since July of the year past and does not exercise the functions of president, she can keep her minutes.
Based on the precedents set by the cases of Quim Torra and Pau Juvillà , whose status as deputies was withdrawn after separate sentences of disqualification for disobedience, the course of these allegations, parallel to those that Borràs herself may present , It is not expected to be very long, but it once again expands the interim situation in which the Parliament is installed.
The two socialist members of the Roundtable, the second vice-president, Assumpta Escarp, and the first secretary, Ferran Pedret, have recalled that the Supreme Court has already ruled on two occasions endorsing the JEC and have refused to present allegations, the content of which they have verbally questioned .
But the proposal of the first vice president, the Republican Alba Vergés, whom the JEC questioned directly and who wanted to collate her decision with the other members of the Table, has gone ahead thanks to the pro-independence majority (ERC, Junts and CUP have four representatives) of the governing body of the Catalan Chamber, which has until April 28 to present its pleadings to the JEC, based, according to parliamentary sources, on the fact that the institution has its “own protection mechanisms” and rejects ” interference”.
If this term runs out, and taking into account that May 1 and 2 are public holidays in Madrid, until the end of the first week of next month there will not be a response from the JEC to the Parliament’s allegations, which, in any case , by virtue of what has been observed in the previous cases, it is expected that she will proceed to withdraw Borrà s’ minutes and appoint Antoni Castellà , the next on the electoral list for which she was elected, the new deputy.
It will be then, and if no unforeseen event arises, something that cannot be ruled out in the convoluted activity of the Parliament in this legislature, when the election of a new president of the Chamber must be set for the next plenary session. And that is where the question arises as to whether this will happen before or after the municipal elections on May 28.
The first week of May there is a plenary session set in the session calendar, which is to be held on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th, but then there is no other until the end of the month, which is scheduled to start on the 30th, so that could be the case, if the response from the JEC reaches Barcelona, ​​for example, on Friday May 5, a week after receiving the allegations from the Parliament, that the elections were held without the replacement having been carried out of the presidency of the Chamber.
In any case, parliamentary sources explain, this calendar is indicative and is likely to be adjusted to the needs of the legislature, and it can always be modified if so agreed by the board of spokespersons, so that, although no plenary session is scheduled to be held during electoral campaign, an extraordinary session could be called if circumstances so require and the groups agree.
“We know what the JEC is doing,” said the spokesperson for the PSC-Units per Avançar, AlÃcia Romero, who referred at the press conference to the previous cases of Torra and Juvillà to demand responsibility from Junts, ERC and the CUP , the parties that led to Borrà s being elected president of the Parliament, and to ask that action be taken “with the utmost speed” to restore normalcy to the Chamber.
With the “grotesque” of these allegations, the Board is “making the partridge dizzy” and prolonging the interim situation, Nacho MartÃn Blanco, from Ciudadanos, added, asking that Borrà s not continue “not one more minute” as deputy And as for his replacement, the commons are clear about it and urge the ERC and the CUP to “clarify themselves” and bet on a left-wing candidate. “We have to sit down to talk about a president who reflects the majority of progress in Parliament,” argued David Cid.
Be that as it may, the ball has passed today from Parliament to the JEC. When I come back, according to the analogy with video games installed in Catalan politics, it will be necessary to pass the screen. But perhaps that will happen already after 28-M.
