Ten marathon hours of debate culminated on Monday night with a decision that has sparked a serious crisis. A Constitutional Court broken in two, with internal accusations of breaking the law for stopping, at the request of the PP, the legislative processing of some amendments that sought to modify the election system of the Court itself. Eleven magistrates, four votes, from ten in the morning to ten at night.
The progressives tried to convince their fellow majority that, if they went ahead, the court would break all the rules of the game. But there was no option to negotiate. The positions were acrimonious, and the only difference is that the conservative side has six votes compared to five for the other sector. If there was no change, all was lost. “It is absolutely inadmissible that the very precautionary measures have been accepted. None of the budgets for it are met and yet all the prohibitions are violated, ”says a source.
The minority defended that a precautionary measure can never be the early granting of protection. In his opinion, with the measure the amendment has been removed from the vote, therefore it no longer makes sense to go into the substance of the matter because in practice it has already been resolved.
The conservatives saw it with another prism. If they were allowed to vote, the TC would be allowing the violation of the rights of political participation to the deputies of the PP. The minority warned that it was a concealed unconstitutionality appeal, that the TC was acting as a legislative power, that they were skipping the laws of the court and that the very precautionary ones represented a "serious disturbance" of the functioning of the Courts, which should be able to act without interference.
In the individual votes, it will be recorded that the measure adopted by the court is "irreparable" because the two provisions to reform the law of the Judiciary and the Constitutional Court cannot be submitted to deliberation in the Senate and therefore "can never be repaired". the damage caused. For this reason, these dissenting sources regret that the court has somehow participated in the blocking strategy established by the PP and the conservatives.
Until the body reached the heart of the matter, which led to institutional declarations from the presidents of the Senate, Congress and the Government, the plenary session of the court had submitted the matter to three initial votes.
First vote. The plenary session started shortly after ten in the morning. The first point to be debated was whether the president went too far in addressing the matter in full with such urgency to avoid a vote on the amendment in the Congress of Deputies. According to court sources, it was the speaker, Enrique Arnaldo, who pressured the president, Pedro González Trevijano, not to wait and take him to plenary session "at night", as the progressives said. The conservatives accepted this option.
Second vote. Admission to process. At five in the afternoon, they raised their hands. The progressives had tried to convince the majority that an appeal can only be admitted when all previous internal avenues have been exhausted, and this was not the case here. The six conservatives did not see it that way. They understood that if it was expected, the measures stopped making sense. "The TC broke the law by calling the plenary session and admitting the appeal for processing," maintain sources from the body's minority.
Third ballot. The progressives were convinced that when the challenges arrived there would be a reversal in the majorities because both González-Trevijano and Antonio Narváez would depart, as United Podemos and PSOE had requested. The accounts went wrong. His argument was that the only one who could challenge was the Cortes Generales as a defendant. Progressives objected. On the one hand, because the law says that a challenged person cannot be part of the vote on his challenge. And on the other hand, for a matter of appearance of impartiality.
Fourth ballot. The progressives already knew that all was lost. According to sources close to this sector, when they saw that the two magistrates were still in the debate, they understood that the majority was going to prevail to vote on the very precautionary measures requested by the PP and stop the process.
