The lawyers of Congress do not see “formal defects” for the amnesty law proposal to be debated in the Lower House, and therefore they support its initiation of processing, as the SER has advanced and has confirmed this newspaper. The legal report prepared by the lawyers that accompanies the bill, which will be studied tomorrow Tuesday at the Congress Board, argues that the norm registered last week alone by the PSOE “lacks formal defects that make it impossible to admit it for processing.” for the debate of political groups.” This same Monday, the PP has challenged the senior lawyer of the Chamber, Fernando Galindo, alleging that he was general director and undersecretary in the Government of Pedro Sánchez and that he is married to the person who was the general director of Relations with the Cortes until two years ago. weeks.
The lawyers’ text, signed by Galindo, contains seven conclusions. The first is that the qualification of the initiatives by the Board is not intended as a first judicial instance, a kind of prior control of constitutionality, as determined by different rulings of the Constitutional Court before the processing of the statutes of Catalonia and Euskadi. The second is that the proposal “lacks formal defects that would make it impossible to admit it for processing.” The third refers to the historical basis and the inadmissibility of the amnesty law proposal presented by the pro-independence parties in March 2021 and which was then not allowed to be processed because it was conceived, the lawyers now say, as a general pardon, something expressly prohibited by article 62 of the Constitution.
The fourth conclusion of the legal experts of Congress delves into this aspect to say that the current proposal “has elements that differentiate it” from the inadmissible one of 2021 and that distinguish it from a general pardon. The fifth maintains that, if there were other possible reasons for unconstitutionality, “they would not arise from a direct reading of any provision of the Constitution, but from an interpretation of them applied to the figure of the amnesty, which the Court should carry out.” Constitutional”, a doctrine that “has not yet been dictated”. The sixth defends that “there do not seem to exist in the Constitution or in constitutional jurisprudence sufficient elements to determine” whether the proposed law contradicts the Constitution. And the seventh concludes by explaining that the Board, which is a political body with a progressive majority of five members compared to the PP’s four, is the one who must decide on this type of qualifications, as will be ratified tomorrow.
Vox, which does not have any deputies on the Board, has already announced that it will file a complaint against the legal authors of that report and against the members of that body who approve that qualification for a possible crime of prevarication, because they denounce that they are thus legitimizing a “ blow to the rule of law,” as confirmed this Monday by its leader, Santiago Abascal.
It is more than possible that the PP will propose, before other measures, a written reconsideration of that decision of the Board. But before the lawyers’ report was known, the PP had already registered this Monday in Congress the request for the recusal of the general secretary and senior lawyer of the Cortes, Fernando Galindo, with the intention that he cannot “carry out the proposal.” qualification technique of the organic amnesty law proposal.” The PP requests that Galindo’s appointment, which was formalized only a couple of weeks ago, be revoked because it understands that “it violates the legal principles of impartiality and objectivity” given that the lawyer was part of the Government of Pedro Sánchez (he was general director and undersecretary) and is married to the person who was the general director of Relations with the Courts until last October 30. It is not the first time that a general secretary and senior lawyer of Congress comes from or has passed through different Executives, also during the PP’s mandates.
The PP is not willing to let go of the political grip of its frontal opposition to the law that will amnesty the accused of the processes Catalan independence movement, and is going to take this matter to all the institutions in which it has representation, including the Congress Board. The popular ones remember in their recusal letter that Galindo was first general director of Autonomous and Local Cooperation, and then, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Territorial Policy. He held that position until October 31, 2023, two days before being named secretary general of Congress at the proposal of the president of the Chamber, the socialist Francina Armengol. The PP thus considers that the current senior lawyer—who has 13 years of experience and was unanimously appointed on three occasions to different responsibilities in Congress, also under the Popular Party’s mandate—does not meet the conditions for that position.
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The PP relates Galindo’s presence in the Government until two weeks ago with the preparation of the amnesty law proposal, which has been formally presented by the socialist parliamentary group, but which the popular party assigns to the Executive. Sources from the Presidency of the Chamber maintain that Galindo had nothing to do with the creation of that rule and emphasize that there have been dozens of cases of lawyers who have previously collaborated with different executives.
The figure of Fernando Galindo will be key from this Tuesday, because he will have to speak out as senior lawyer and general secretary of Congress on the acceptance and qualification of the amnesty law proposal for it to begin its processing. The PP interprets that since, in a public statement, Minister Félix Bolaños even commented that the amnesty bill could be “vehiculated” as a bill—that is, formally presented by parliamentary groups, not by the Executive—, that It demonstrates that the text has been “prepared and drafted by the Government or at least that the Executive has had full knowledge of it.” And in that line of argument, the popular group arrives at the conclusion that “it is more than likely” that Galindo “is aware of the text that has been registered in Congress or of one of its previous drafts,” so “he is disqualified from issue a report in relation to the same.”
The popular ones also question the senior lawyer because he is married to Mercedes Cabrera, who until October 30 held a position in the Government as general director of Relations with the Cortes. The PP argues that, according to the law of the Legal Regime of the Public Sector, that of Senior Officials and the Statute of Personnel of the Cortes, Galindo should abstain from this matter for not having sufficient “objectivity and impartiality.”
The popular group remembers that on March 23, 2021, the previous Secretary General of Congress, Carlos Gutiérrez, presented a technical opinion on a proposed amnesty law, presented by ERC and other Catalan pro-independence groups, in which he maintained that it should not be admitted. being processed for entering into a “glaring and obvious contradiction with the Constitution.” However, and as EL PAÍS reported this Monday, that same senior lawyer prepared a report in March 2018, for the then president of the Chamber, the popular Ana Pastor, in which he not only maintained a different position but even advised the drafting of an amnesty law to contemplate the pardon of an undetermined number of civil guards sanctioned or convicted for claiming their right to professional association.
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