The amendments introduced this Friday by PSOE and Unidas Podemos (UP) to change the election process of the two candidates for the Constitutional Court (TC) that is the responsibility of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) when it is not done within the deadline, has deepened the already existing divisions in the conservative and progressive sectors of both institutions.
Nine members of the Judiciary, from the conservative sector, have asked the president of the body this Friday to convene "urgently" an extraordinary plenary session with a single point on the agenda: the appointment of the Constitutional magistrates of the third that corresponds to the CGPJ and the Executive, before the Government's proposal is approved and enters into force. The Government has announced that it will designate both of its own without waiting for the Judiciary, which insistently blocks the designation, to choose the ones that correspond to them.
The CGPJ plans a plenary session on December 22, but the conservative members had already ruled out reaching an agreement with the progressives to vote for the two new magistrates of the guarantee court. The progressives have already announced their candidate, José Manuel Bandrés.
The government partners propose going from a three-fifths majority to a simple one so that the CGPJ designates its two candidates for the TC and that, in the event that the governing body of the judges continues to fail, their members can be held accountable even penalties.
This Friday's petition includes the signatures of members Nuria Díaz Abad, José Antonio Ballestero, Carmen Llombart, Juan Martínez Moya, Juan Manuel Fernández, José María Macías Castaño, Francisco Gerardo Martínez Tristán, María Ángeles Carmona and Wenceslao Olea. The latter opposed the appointment of Rafael Mozo -in his capacity as the oldest member- as "alternate" president of the CGPJ, after the resignation of Carlos Lesmes in October. Olea's appeal, which requested the annulment of the designation, was rejected by the Supreme Court.
According to the sources consulted by Europa Press, the conservative block of the CGPJ believes that it is a "devastating interference", a "blackmail" and even a threat whose objective is not so much to guarantee that the Council names its two candidates for the TC as that the nominee for the progressive sector be admitted: Supreme Court magistrate José Manuel Bandrés.
From the conservative wing they call attention to the fact that the reform contemplates that, instead of each of the 18 members proposing and voting for two candidates, they propose and vote for only one, which -as they explain- will guarantee that the two more voted are the aspirants chosen by each block, in the case of the progressives, Bandrés.
Negotiations within the CGPJ reached a dead end last week after progressive members ratified Bandrés' candidacy and offered to the conservatives to also accept the candidate they selected without objection. But the conservatives rejected that system, insisting that both candidates must be chosen jointly.
The underlying problem is that the conservative members do not accept Bandrés, although formally they have not blamed him. According to the sources consulted, the conservative bloc manages six names: Pablo Llarena, Julián Sánchez Melgar and Vicente Magro, from the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court; and César Tolosa, Inés Huerta and Diego Córdoba, from the Contentious-Administrative Chamber.
However, from the progressive current they believe that the proposal of PSOE and UP is a legitimate way for the Cortes Generales to offer a solution to the current blockade. In his opinion, the "shameful" thing would be that "nobody did anything" to try to remove the obstacles that prevent the normal functioning of the institutions.
In addition, from the progressive sector it is understood that "reasonable" right now would even be to wait for the aforementioned reform to become a reality to hold any vote in the CGPJ on the two candidates for the TC.
In this context, both blocks are waiting for Mozo, since he is the one who must call the extraordinary plenary session within a period of three days from Monday. This would mean advancing the schedule set because it was expected that the two candidates for the TC would be voted for the first time in the ordinary plenary session on December 22.
According to the aforementioned sources, the progressive members threaten to vote blank in that extraordinary plenary session to wait for the new regulations, which would also mean exceeding the ordinary plenary session, given that Congress could approve the reform next week but the Senate would need until the end of month.
For the progressive members, if the conservative bloc was in no "hurry" to comply with this constitutional obligation, now there is no reason to speed up, and even less so when representatives and senators are expected to change the voting rules.
