The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has annulled the act of deputy of the suspended president of Parliament, Laura Borràs, considering that there is a cause of ineligibility that occurred after being sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to four years and a half in prison and 13 years of disqualification for prevarication and document falsification.
However, this decision must be executed and this, taking into account the precedents of the former president of the Generalitat Quim Torra and the former deputy Pau Juvillà -both sentenced to disqualification for disobedience-, can still take at least a week, which could fully affect the electoral campaign of 28-M.
The decision of the JEC has already reached Parliament this Thursday and the Board has met to discuss the issue. However, it is unlikely that the first vice president of the Chamber acting as president, Alba Vergés, who ultimately is the one who should execute the resolution, will do so immediately since the JEC has not requested her personally, with which she still would not be at risk of committing the crime of disobedience.
Vergés, who is running for mayor of Igualada next May 28, has argued before the JEC, just like Borràs, that the electoral administration is not competent to withdraw the act of deputy and has defended the rules of the House and does not want assume the burden of executing the decision.
What the Parliamentary Committee has decided is to ask the plenary session to rule on the presentation of an appeal before the Supreme Court with the request for precautionary measures, as was done in the case of Torra and Juvillà, then without going through the plenary session. In both cases, the High Court dismissed the appeals and endorsed the power of the JEC to withdraw the seats from Torra and Juvillà.
When the electoral referee made the same decision as the one made yesterday in the cases of Torra and Juvillà, it was not carried out until a few weeks later when the JEC personally summoned the two presidents of Parliament, Roger Torrent and Borràs herself, respectively, to that they did so. In fact, then Torrent, in January 2020, and Borràs, in February 2022, hid behind the respective secretaries general of the Catalan Chamber, Xavier Muro and Esther Andreu, who ordered the officials to withdraw the act of Torra and Juvillà and inform the Electoral Board of this.
Once Borràs's loss of deputy status is consummated, something that could take place next week and therefore on the eve of or in the middle of the electoral campaign of the municipal elections of 28-M, the path will be clear to appoint a new president or Speaker of the Parliament. For this, an extraordinary plenary session will have to be called since the next ordinary plenary session is not scheduled until May 30.
Esquerra has already announced that he wants to maintain the agreement with Junts so that the president of the Chamber is a member of this party by virtue of the agreement between the two formations by which Pere Aragonès was invested as president of the Generalitat. For the election of the president of the Parliament, each deputy must write a name on the ballot and the one who obtains the absolute majority is elected. If this majority is not reached, the election must be repeated between the two deputies that have come closest to the majority, and the one who obtains the greatest number of votes is elected.
The name that sounds the most to fill the position is that of the current mayoress of Vic, Anna Erra (Junts), who is no longer running for re-election after serving her second term. The 65 votes of Junts and ERC would be enough to put her at the head of the Chamber in the second vote, since a PSC candidate without the support of the Republicans or the CUP would not reach this figure. However, the second secretary of the Board, Aurora Madaula, very close to Borràs, in a recent interview suggested that the president of Junts be the one to designate her successor in the Chamber, a position for which she herself ruled out.
