Laura Borràs will lose her membership of the Parliament of Catalonia after the Central Electoral Board (JEC) notified the institution yesterday that it has revoked her credentials due to the conviction at the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, although the Catalan Chamber still the decision has not been formalized and there are still some pages left to write.
The resolution of the Board also includes the issuance of the credential of the next member of the JxCat list, ex-deputy Antoni Castellà, and is firm and executory. The effects of this supervening ineligibility, the reason why the seat in Borràs is withdrawn, "occur automatically from the conviction of the parliamentarian, and the House or the Electoral Administration is limited to its declaration and to adopt the consequences that they come off it", says the JEC. Despite this, the folder relating to this matter is not yet considered closed, because both the Parliament and the affected party will raise an appeal to the Supreme Court against the resolution of the administrative body and the parliamentary bodies have not yet been formalized question
Having reached this point, after the plenary decided it yesterday with the votes in favor of the groups of Esquerra, Junts and the CUP - the rest of the formations spoke against it -, the institution will request the Sala Contenciosa Administrative of the Supreme precautionary measures to nullify the decision of the electoral arbiter. The leader of Junts, for her part, will ask for precautionary measures, which must be resolved even more urgently than precautionary measures.
Although the decision to withdraw the seat from the leader sentenced to 4 and a half years in prison and 13 years of disqualification for the crimes of document falsification and fraud, as was planned, was adopted at the meeting of the administrative body which took place on Wednesday afternoon, it was not until yesterday afternoon when the Catalan Chamber received the notification. The Bureau of the Parliament met urgently and with the votes of the members of ERC, Junts and the CUP it was agreed, at the proposal of the vice-president of the Chamber acting as president, the republican Alba Vergés, to present the appeal and that the plenary ratified what had been arranged by the governing body.
Both Borràs and Vergés had argued before the electoral arbiter that they lacked competence to revoke a credential from the Parliament, but the Electoral Board rejected their argument, as they had already done in previous cases, such as that of the former president Quim Torra and former CUP deputy Pau Juvillà. In fact, in both cases appeals were already raised to the Supreme Court and were rejected, so everything indicates that the same will happen with Borràs.
Considering that the president of Junts has been suspended as a deputy since last July, in application of the institution's regulations, it will not be visible that her seat has been removed until it is published in the Official Bulletin of the Parliament of Catalonia ( BOPC) and the subsequent debate and vote to elect a new president. The presidency of the Chamber has been in an unprecedented situation of interim status since July.
In accordance with the precedents, if the parliamentary bodies do not act in accordance with the resolution of the Electoral Board, Vergés will receive a request from the administrative body to comply with its decision. It already happened with Roger Torrent in 2020 and with Borràs herself in 2022, although she had promised to keep the seat of the former anti-capitalist parliamentarian. If this moment is reached, there will be no further recourse, at least in Parliament.
