The Supreme Court has denied the precautionary measure of suspension of the agreement of the Central Electoral Board (JEC) that withdrew the credentials of deputy of the Parliament of Catalonia from Laura Borràs after her conviction. After this decision, Parliament will have to decide whether to withdraw the minutes, as required by the Board.
Borràs herself appealed to the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the high court and requested as a precautionary measure to nullify the JEC agreement until the court ruled on the merits of the matter. However, the Chamber has rejected her claim and therefore the resolution of the Board that understood that the Parliament must withdraw the record when the cause of supervening ineligibility, and consequent incompatibility, for having been sentenced to disqualification, remains in force. for the crime of prevarication by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC).
The Chamber now rejects the ordinary precautionary suspension of the agreement, requested by Borràs, considering that there is no cause to adopt such a measure while the merits of the appeal are being resolved, and bases its decision on the existing jurisprudence in similar cases.
The order recalls that it has not been appreciated that there is irreparable damage, since there is the possibility of suspending and, where appropriate, annulling the credential issued by the Central Electoral Board to the substitute deputy in the event that the court finally agrees with him. .
Faced with the allegation of the acting president of the Parliament that a late estimating sentence would be insufficient, the Supreme Court points out that "her approach, apart from questioning the constitutionality of the norm, would lead to an automatism in the application of precautionary protection that would make it useless." the provisions of the LOREG, with the effect of the practical non-application of the causes of ineligibility".
For the court, in case of adopting the precautionary measure to request, it would be enough to delay the processing of the appeal until the end of the legislature. In any case, the Chamber "is in a position to rule on the merits within a reasonable time," he adds.
And as regards the weighting of interests at stake, the court considers that the general interest that should prevail is the one that is present in the conviction. “In this moment, rather, the appearance of good law becomes contrary to the suspension, without prejudging the merits of the matter. In addition - as the Public Prosecutor recalls - LOREG itself already makes such a weighting of the general interest affected as a result of the criminal conviction of a parliamentary representative ”, he concludes.
The JEC adopted this decision after the TSJC sentenced Borràs to four and a half years in prison and 13 years of disqualification on March 30 for the crimes of document falsification and prevarication for irregularities committed at the head of the Institució de les Lletres Catalans, between 2013 and 2017.
The sentence considers it proven that the now president of Junts divided eighteen contracts when she directed the ILC to award them by hand to a friend, Isaías Herrero, for the maintenance work on the institution's web portal without having to submit to a public tender. The commission to Herrero for the maintenance of the web portal was carried out "personally and directly by Borràs despite knowing that in doing so he was dispensing with the mandatory administrative contracting procedure that had to be submitted to an open procedure with a public tender", underlines the resolution.
