The two-party system weaker of the Spanish democracy wants to eat the bulk of the cake. Or almost. PP and PSOE, which account for 62% of the seats in Congress, they have negotiated alone, in recent months the distribution of the 20 vowels that make up the General Council of Judicial Power (CGPJ) and, according to the first agreement reached between the two forces, both formations will be left virtually with all the chairs of the organ.
we Can Only are trying to scrape two names: the judge Victoria Rosell, the candidate of the formation to the Parliament in the elections of 2015, and Esther Erice, president of the Provincial Audience of Navarra and with a recognised profile for the feminist groups. According to sources in the negotiations, both will have to be agreed in advance between the team of Pablo Iglesias and the Government. Like the other two of the proposed candidates, José Ricardo de Prada and José María Fernández Seijo, although these were also among the preferences of the socialists.
In this way, the two main parties of the country, which joined just currently 62% of the deputies —the second of the lowest percentages of bipartisanship since the beginning of the current democratic period, behind only the least marked in the elections of 2015—, will participate directly in the nomination of 20 members. That is to say, in the 100% of the elect.
The agreement means that nine of them proposed by the popular, who have admitted to stay in the minority to change that is to appoint the conservative Manuel Marchena as president of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ. And to the other 11, the PSOE, consensuará four of them we Can, according to sources of the left-wing coalition. Citizens, for their part, has been excluded from the process to the disagree of the method of designation, which qualifies as a “distribution to the finger of the judges”, in the words of Albert Rivera.
Despite the nuances derived from the conversations of the socialists with the formation of Churches, the percentage of members nominated exclusively by the two-party system (80%) will still be very far from what it should be if you respect the proportionality of the Congress. So, if you made a distribution, in function of the number of seats they currently have in the chamber, the PP (with 134 mps) would be eight members. The PSOE, with 84 seats, only five —and, in exchange, will participate in the nomination of 11—. To Can, four. Citizens, two. And the rest of the forces, one.
But the negotiation between popular and socialist, that feature three-fifths of both Chambers to move forward with their agreement, away from this distribution and let outside political forces minority that historically have achieved representation. Above all, the nationalist basques and catalans, who traditionally did propose to some vocal thanks to its capacity of influence in the Courts.
A review of the composition of the CGPJ for the past 30 years evidence this system, which has always kept an apparent correlation. In 2013, for example, when PP and PSOE accounted for 85% of the seats, both forces proposed to 17 members (85% of total) —among them Fernando Grande-Marlaska, driven by the popular and current Interior minister Pedro Sanchez—. The other three names emerged from the ranks of IU, CiU and PNV.
Other formations
In 2008 the same thing happened: the popular and socialist had 92% of the parliamentarians, and was assigned to 18 of the directors (90%). Also it happened like in 2001, 1996 and 1990, when the power of bipartisanship ranged between 88% and 80.6% of the House and divided up between 17 and 18 vowels —leaving room for the nationalist basques and catalans, UI, coalición Canaria and the CDS—. But, now, that percentage has plummeted to the floor. And PP and the PSOE are still negotiating alone the entire cast of a cake that they eat.
