Remember that PSOE and Podemos already tried to lower those majorities and months later they had to “give up”
MADRID, 2 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The general secretary of the PP, Cuca Gamarra, warned the Government of Pedro Sánchez on Wednesday that maintaining the current system of three-fifths majorities to elect the members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) “guarantees non-interference” of other powers of the State in the Judiciary.
“That majority that is established is the majority that guarantees the non-interference of one power over another power. Anything that reduces them would undoubtedly be detrimental,” Gamarra warned in the corridors of Congress.
In addition, the leader of the PP has recalled the groups that support the Government already wanted more than two years ago to lower that majority system to elect the members of the Council but months later they withdrew that reform. “They already tried and had to give it up,” she stressed.
Gamarra was referring to the organic law proposal to reform the CGPJ election system that the PSOE and United We Can parliamentary groups registered on October 13, 2020 with the aim of circumventing the “blockade” of which they accused the PP.
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, had advanced weeks before his intention to promote this reform of the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ) to enable the renewal of this body and, later, the PSOE explained that the objective would be to lower the majority of three-fifths currently needed.
However, a few months later, on April 20, 2021, the then Minister of Justice, Juan Carlos Campo, announced the Government’s intention to request the withdrawal of that bill, which was strongly contested by the associations of judges and placed under the magnifying glass of the EU and the Council of Europe.
“We are going to propose to the groups that presented it that they withdraw it,” Campo said then during the press conference after the Council of Ministers. In this way, the Government withdrew from that project, although it did carry out the reform that prevents the Council from making appointments once its mandate has ended.
From Podemos they have once again demanded the PSOE this Wednesday to change that majority system for the CGPJ. Specifically, the spokesman for United We Can in Congress, Pablo Echenique, has indicated that they want to negotiate with the PSOE to recover the reform to lower the majorities, ensuring that there are enough votes in Congress to undertake this change and overcome the “blockade” of the PP .
On the other hand, Gamarra has been questioned about her statements last Tuesday disassociating the reform from the crime of sedition from the negotiation to renew the General Council of the Judiciary, two days before her party suspended the negotiations.
“We have already given explanations about that and it was in another context. And we have already spoken,” Gamarra has settled in the corridors of the Lower House to journalists.
Last Friday, a few hours after the PP issued a statement suspending the negotiations, Gamarra defended the “total and absolute transparency” with which his party had acted before the Spaniards, assuring that “what was changed 48 hours before” the Government was transferring to the PP in relation to the reform of the crime of sedition.
Thus, he indicated that the Minister of Finance and ‘number two’ of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero, “confirms” it in parliament when announcing that reform in the Budget debate to “please the ERC and the independentistas”. And then, he continued, that position is “confirmed and ratified” by Pedro Sánchez to Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
“It is the key moment and, after changing the position that the PSOE had transferred to us in the negotiation, it is when the negotiations for the PP are suspended and the Prime Minister is directly informed,” Gamarra said on TVE on Friday.
For his part, the PP’s Deputy Secretary for Institutions, Esteban González Pons, said this Tuesday in an interview in El Mundo that the Government “used the excuse” that it did not have enough votes for that penal reform and the PP admitted “that euphemism “. “It is the Government that stopped dissimulating and on Thursday it definitively accepted that as soon as it can it will modify the crime of sedition,” added the Valencian MEP.
