He rules out that the minister had to “deliberate and meditate” whether to abide by the TC or the Parliament
BARCELONA, 29 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Prosecutor’s Office has asked the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to sentence the Minister of Foreign Action and the European Union of the Generalitat, Meritxell Serret, and also disqualify her from running for the elections to the European Parliament, and believes that by not leaving the Government before 1-O “assumed that he was disobeying”.
Serret faces a one-year disqualification sentence and a fine of 12,000 euros for alleged disobedience on 1-O, and in this Wednesday’s trial the prosecutor Neus Pujal has specified in her accusation that she wants the disqualification to also affect the possibility of being an MEP.
“Unlike other ministers who withdrew because they were aware of their criminal responsibility, the defendant decided to continue, she did not withdraw,” said the prosecutor, who added that she also participated in acts of adherence to the independence roadmap, such as submitting the referendum question.
The prosecutor has also criticized that Serret did nothing to prevent 1-O despite the fact that he had received five requirements from the Constitutional Court (TC) in this regard and has stated that, “as a public authority, he had a reinforced duty beyond that individuals” to comply with the court’s rulings.
At the trial, Serret has made a statement in which he has reproached the judicialization of the independence process, to which the prosecutor has replied: “Here, Mrs. Serret, ideas or any political project are not being criminalized. You have not sat in the bench to a single person who voted on 1-O. He has said that voting is not a crime, it is that the Prosecutor’s Office has not accused any of the voters”.
“We are not going to accuse anyone for their thoughts or ideas, only for specific facts, in their case for the stubborn, repeated and obstinate attitude contrary to what was ordered by the TC,” added the prosecutor.
In his speech, Serret has also alleged that he had to make a balanced judgment between the “mandate” of the pro-independence majority in Parliament in favor of 1-O and the requirements of the TC.
In this sense, the prosecutor has indicated that before a judicial order to a public authority “what the Organic Law of the TC does not provide is that it has to start deliberating and meditating on whether to weigh the rights, see if the requirement of the TC or the supposed democratic mandate”.
“If all judicial resolutions had to be submitted to an internal deliberation process, it would be chaos, we would return to a time before the social contract,” the prosecutor has settled.
State lawyer Beatriz Vizcaíno, also in favor of disqualifying Serret for disobedience, has highlighted that the minister was summoned five times by the TC and allegedly ignored them, for which she considers that all the elements are present to convict her of a crime of disobedience .
Faced with a possible request for an attenuation of undue delays due to the duration of the procedure, Vizcaíno has asked the court to take into account that Serret was declared in absentia in 2018 and since then it took almost three years to appear before the investigator of the case in the Court Supreme (TS).
The presence of the State lawyer in the trial has been challenged by Serret’s defense, which considers that it is not entitled to act as an accusation, something to which the court will answer in the sentence.
Vox, which exercises popular prosecution, has referred to the 1-O sentence issued by the Supreme Court in October 2014 and which already included penalties for disobedience: “These are the same facts that have been proven in this trial.”
The formation’s lawyer, Juan Cremades, has assessed that Serret’s defense “has not provided any evidence or made any probative effort that disproves that, unlike other members of the Government convicted by the Supreme Court, he did not disobey the TC”.
