The PP announces that it will go “until the end” and demands that Batet not publish the result of the vote
Pablo Casado is not willing to give up a triumph that the PP caressed. The rejection of the Congress to the validation of the labor reform would have been a blow to the Government. The opposition leader announced this Friday that his party is going “to the end” to correct “the rigging” that, in his opinion, was perpetrated by not allowing the president of the Chamber that his deputy Alberto Casero modify the meaning of your vote after an alleged computer error.
The president of the popular raised the tone of his complaint during an electoral act in Soria, and in addition to the “parliamentary rigging” that he attributed to Meritxell Batet, he spoke of “democratic outrage”, “deception of the Spanish”, “attack on sovereignty national”, “acts improper of a developed democracy”. For all these reasons, the PP is not going to leave parliamentary and judicial instance unused to change the result of the vote. The labor reform was validated with 175 votes in favor and 174 against, figures that would have been reversed if Batet had accepted that the PP deputy vote again. An attitude that, according to Casado, could lead to a lawsuit for prevarication before the Supreme Court against the president of Congress.
The leader of the popular believes he has legal wickers so that his lawsuit before the Constitutional prospers. He hides behind the precedents of a previous sentence on a vote in the Basque Parliament and in the agreements of the Congress Table that regulate the telematic vote. For now, a court in Madrid has opened proceedings after the complaint of a private citizen against the vote of Congress.
Casado was the spearhead of his party’s offense. Behind them were the spokeswoman in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, sent a letter to Batet this Friday to ask that the result of the vote not be published in the bulletin of the Cortes and that it not be sent to the Official State Gazette either. A few hours earlier, Deputy Casero himself had delivered another letter to the president of Congress to defend that she had “violated” her right to vote and to denounce that the result “does not express the popular will.”
The PP believes at face value the version of its deputy, a close collaborator of the general secretary, Teodoro García Egea, despite the fact that those responsible for the computer services of Congress ruled out the technical failure. They pointed out that the system is equipped with a vote verification safeguard that prevents mistakes.
triple wrong
There is also the circumstance that the PP deputy voted on Thursday against the guidelines of his group on three occasions, not only with the labor reform, a triple error that makes the theory of the telematic problem waters. Parliamentary sources without distinction of political color pointed out that the decision is always human. There is no precedent in Congress for an anomaly when casting the vote on your computer.
The PP has no choice but to endorse the version of the technical error because the human error has no legal path
In fact, in the 28 votes on Thursday, twelve errors were recorded by the deputies who opted for the computerized route. Among them, the minister Alberto Garzón, who erred twice, the spokesman for Podemos, Pablo Echenique, two other purple representatives and four from the PP. None alleged technical failures.
All deputies are wrong at some time throughout the legislature in the hundreds of votes that occur. Mariano Rajoy erred in 2017 by rejecting an amendment to his Budget; Pablo Iglesias did the same by supporting them; and Pedro Sánchez supported in 2015 the reform of the PP of the abortion law. And like them, the rest of the 350 deputies both in person and online.
The opposition leader does not rule out suing the president of Congress in the Supreme Court for prevarication
But the PP has no choice but to endorse Casero’s version of the computer error because human error has no way in court. Although the popular spokesman in the Senate, Javier Maroto, considered the cause “irrelevant” this Friday, the official position is that it was a technical problem and that there was an abuse of the rights of his representative that altered the result of the vote .
The resolution of the conflict is not going to be substantiated in Congress because Batet does not plan to meet the Table, as the PP demands, to agree on a repetition of the vote. The legal services of the Chamber recalled that this decision has never been made due to the slippage of a parliamentarian when pressing the button.
The scenario where it will be elucidated is the Constitutional Court whenever the PP resorts to that instance. But legal sources consider it very unlikely that the court of guarantees agrees with the PP’s demands.