The chair is not vacant. The Republicans announced that there would be no abandonment of functions while the former convergents decide whether or not to replace Laura Borràs in the presidency of the Parliament, and this morning it has been evidenced in the meeting of the Table, in which Alba Vergés, first vice president, has exercised the functions of president from the head, the place that until now Borràs occupied.
As expected, the Table has rejected the admission for processing of the request for reconsideration presented by Junts on the suspension of Borràs. The two members of the ERC, the other two of the PSC and the representative of the CUP have imposed their opinion on that of Aurora Madaula, the only deputy of Junts in the governing body of the Chamber after the suspension of the rights and obligations of Borràs decided in July, after the opening of oral proceedings for alleged crimes related to corruption.
Although Junts parliamentary sources denounce the "absolute defenselessness" that the non-admission to process of the reconsideration supposes for Borràs, the rest of the political formations consider that the suspension of the deputy has occurred based on the regulations of the Chamber and has not place the reconsideration, since said suspension does not derive from parliamentary writings or documents.
All in all, Junts has presented this morning an extension to its request for reconsideration, with new legal arguments based on the opinion of the UN Human Rights Committee that yesterday censured the disqualification prior to sentencing of several Junts deputies by the Spanish justice considering that their political rights were violated.
Thus, the board of spokespersons, meeting as required after the Table had done so to rule on the request that was debated today, has also imposed its majority on Junts to reject the reconsideration and the different groups have also ruled out that the new legal arguments lead to alter its refusal. "They are not assimilable cases", point out ERC parliamentary sources to argue against Junts' strategy of equating the situation of Borràs to that of those prosecuted for 1-O. "Whoever wants to equate Jordi Turull's involvement in putting up the ballot boxes with that of Laura Borràs, allegedly involved in a corruption case, is wrong," ERC spokeswoman Marta Vilalta announced.
The defense of Borràs, who does not go to his office although he does go to the Parliament despite being suspended, is based on exhausting all the procedures in the Parliament prior to the request for protection from the Constitutional Court, with the horizon of going to the European Court of Human Rights Ultimately human. However, the Board has refused to request a report from the lawyers, since it considers that Borràs's proposals "do not fall" into any of the assumptions included in the Parliament's regulations to admit a reconsideration.
In a press conference from the Parliament after the decision of the Table, the ERC spokeswoman, Marta Vilalta, has insisted on not linking "the political victory in the UN" of the independence movement with "personal causes that have nothing to do with it". The independence movement must "always set an example", said Vilalta, who has defended the ERC's decision to apply article 25.4 of the regulation to suspend Borràs, for which the position adopted on July 16 has been ratified. "Junts has been left alone against this decision," she argued.
Regarding the interim situation that the Parliament is experiencing, which extends to the vacancy in the general secretariat after the resignation of Esther Andreu due to the case of the hiring of her son as an usher, the Republicans defend that the "proactive part" to Junts has the power to make a proposal, which is the one who exercises, based on the legislative agreement, the power to propose a new candidate for the presidency of the Parliament. "Prolonging this situation is a disservice to the institution itself," Vilalta has sentenced.
"Neither the cases are comparable nor are there contradictions. There is no violation of rights. It is the violation of an internal rule, the Parliament's regulations, which we have endowed ourselves with to preserve the honorability of the institution. It is a reversible decision. No one has been tried. It is a precautionary measure", reiterated the Republican spokeswoman, who has defended the full validity of the article of the regulation by which Borràs has been suspended in the face of the criticism that her wording has received from Junts.
For his part, the president of the Citizens in Parliament group, Carlos Carrizosa, explained that the reconsideration proposed by Junts is "surreal". "It seems unbelievable that Junts is trying to extend the holiday soap opera with Mrs. Borras until September", exclaimed Carrizosa, for whom "nobody wants Mrs. Borràs" beyond her party "and we would have to talk if her entire party he loves her," he ironized. In this sense, the leader of Ciudadanos has recalled the "repeated clashes" between the deputies of his group and the president of the Chamber to highlight that from the first moment he warned the ERC and the CUP that their election, given the situation court of Borràs, investigated for dividing contracts in her time as director of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes, was not, in her opinion, pertinent. As a solution to the interim, Carrizosa has proposed that all the members of the Table resign so that a new one is elected in which Borràs, suspended as a deputy, could no longer aspire to be.
From the ranks of the PP, Lorena Roldán has lamented the "grotesque and unstable" situation caused by the "brawl" between Junts and ERC. "They agreed to appoint Borràs as president of the Parliament and now they don't want to take responsibility for her," said the PP spokeswoman. The crimes of continued prevarication and false documents are linked to corruption, according to Roldán, and therefore the regulations are "clear" in respect and now the rules of the game cannot be "reneged".
In the ideological antipodes on this issue, the spokeswoman for Junts, Mònica Sales, has assured that after "this difficult day" her parliamentary group will continue to "conscientiously" defend Laura Borràs in the face of a decision that, from her point of view, " It violates fundamental rights such as the presumption of innocence and political participation", an argument that has been underlined with the opinion issued yesterday by the UN Human Rights Committee.
Aurora Madaula, for her part, explained that the Board did not want to admit the reconsideration for processing despite having expanded it with the UN ruling regarding the "deprivation of political rights" of Borràs. "There is no difference between the case of the political prisoners and that of Borràs. There has been no trial or sentence, only an accusation against which everyone should have the right to defend themselves", pointed out the second secretary of the Table, who has questioned the refusal of his colleagues in the governing body to request a report from the Chamber's lawyers on the matter. "Without a legal report, today's decision is a political and partisan decision adopted by the vice president acting as president," Madaula charged against Vergés.
