He says that the legacy of Felipe González is to allow the parties to attack and control the judges
MADRID, 21 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Vox spokesman in Congress, Iván Espinosa de los Monteros, has argued this Friday that the European Union’s criticism of Poland and Hungary for political interference in the Judiciary would deserve the same reproaches to Spain in the face of the “fight” of the parties for controlling the CGPJ and appointing judges and magistrates.
“The criticism of Poland and Hungary should bring the same criticism, and I hope not the same sanctions, to Spain,” said the spokesman at the opening of a conference organized by Vox in the Congress of Deputies on judicial independence.
And he has called to prevent that from happening in Spain, adding that PSOE and PP do not guarantee that it will not happen. “The division of powers is absolutely violated as a result of the parties’ struggle to appoint judges and magistrates,” he described.
The spokesman has criticized that the PSOE claims Felipe González as guarantor of freedoms 40 years after his first electoral victory when that first socialist government of democracy established the parliamentary election of the 20 members of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), which has allowed the political parties to be playing at “controlling” the judges.
“The betrayal of the separation of powers came in 1985 when the Organic Law of the Judiciary (LOPJ)” was approved “which extended the parliamentary election system to” all “the members of the governing body of the judges”, considered the spokesman by Vox.
Espinosa de los Monteros recalled that the then Vice President of the Government, Alfonso Guerra, justified the need to approve this law by alleging that “Montesquieu was dead”, alluding to the thinker who theorized about the separation of powers.
He has stated that the absolute majority of that socialist executive “finished off, buried and buried the separation of powers in stone.” “That was the PSOE of the 1980s and the first government of Felipe González, whom some now evoke as a guarantor of freedoms,” he criticized, before adding that the PP had the opportunity to modify that reform “but did not do it” .
The spokesman has said that in recent years there has been an “unprecedented attack” on Justice because “those who for many years should have defended the judges have preferred to play control, through the front door or the back door” .
Espinosa de los Monteros has expressed that, taking advantage of this system, the Government now led by Pedro Sánchez has tried to “intimidate” the judges, has questioned judicial sentences as “never seen before” and has made partisan use of the Prosecutor’s Office or the State Attorney’s Office to satisfy its allies, allowing the “humiliation” of pardons for those convicted of the ‘procés’.
For Vox, in favor of the judges electing their representatives in the CGPJ “now” on their own, the quality and stability of the Spanish institutions depend on the fact that there is no “control and pressure” on the Judiciary by the other powers of the Condition.
“Spain can have a modern, fast, transparent, independent justice system subject only to the law and with better financial and material resources, but it is absolutely necessary” that this system be governed by “a body independent of political bodies.” “It can be done, it just takes political will,” he defended.
