After five and a half years of blockage to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), an unusual and absolutely anomalous institutional situation, it seemed that everything was finally resolved in June. The PSOE and the PP reached an agreement to renew it after multiple refusals to do so, for years, by the popular party. Each party put 10 members on the table and between the 20 they had as their first mission to decide the appointment of the president and normalize the functioning of the governing body of the judges after all these years of discredit. But the day of the beginning of the judicial year is approaching, on September 5, and there is still no closed agreement on who should exercise the presidency. What seemed resolved is running aground again despite the imperative democratic need for the CGPJ to begin to function as a normal constitutional body.
What is happening? First of all, this is the first time in history that this appointment has actually been made by the members. Since 1985, when the current system for electing members of the CGPJ was established, until now, the presidency was agreed upon by the parties. The PSOE and the PP, mainly. They reached an agreement and the members voted and supported that candidate. Nothing more. This has been the case in each and every one of the Council’s renewals. But this time the decision has been left in the hands of the members.
So, on the one hand, it is a new situation. And who is president is key because his vote will be fundamental in any decision if the two sectors, the one with the most conservative sensitivity and the one with the most progressive sensitivity, do not agree on something. It is 10 and 10, and the president’s vote will be the tiebreaker. In addition, it is a joint presidency of the CGPJ and the Supreme Court, with all the institutional, management and representative burden that this entails.
The first thing the current members had to do after taking office was to establish and vote on the election procedure in detail, because it had never been done before. From there, a series of candidates were put on the table – each member could propose one -. Seven names emerged from that plenary session. All of them, judges of the Supreme Court. The members of the progressive sector put three on the table: Pilar Teso and Ángeles Huet, judges of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, and Ana Ferrer, judge of the Criminal Chamber. The members of the conservative sector put four: Pablo Lucas and Esperanza Córdoba, judges of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber, and Antonio del Moral and Carmen Lamela, of the Criminal Chamber.
Given the current configuration of the Congress of Deputies, this time the presidency would be held by a progressive judge. And it seems that this is something that everyone accepts, although the conservative sector clarifies that what they are looking for is “excellence”. “If it is through a progressive candidate, we are in agreement,” says one member.
A first debate around two names
What matters most is what happens closer to home. To make sure you don’t miss anything, subscribe.
KEEP READING
The conservative sector ended up betting everything on one candidate: Pablo Lucas. “He is a very prestigious judge, with a progressive profile, with an unbeatable CV,” they argue. Lucas, 70 years old, a professor of Constitutional Law and academic of the Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, has been a judge of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court since 2001, has been part of its governing chamber since 2013 and is the judge who exercises prior judicial control over the CNI since 2009.
“The conservative members unilaterally assumed that Lucas had to be the new president no matter what,” said one of the members of the progressive sector. “But one party cannot decide on its own who the consensus candidate is. Agreements are not made like this: they are constructed, not imposed.” And the progressive sector had its own favourite candidate: Pilar Teso. “Her technical, professional and career merits are at least as unquestionable as those of Pablo Lucas,” said one member of the progressive sector. Teso, 64, entered the judicial career in 1985, has served in the High Court of Justice of Madrid, the National Court, the technical cabinet of the Supreme Court and has been a magistrate of the high court since 2008, 16 years ago. The progressive sector also argued that she was perfect as a consensus candidate, that she was a person who had never been affiliated with any judicial association and that throughout her career she had kept away from partisan politics. And they want it to be a woman given that 57% of the judicial career is already made up of women (73% of the last promotion of the Judicial School) and that parity in the judicial leadership is still far from being achieved.
Several votes were held, and the candidates with the fewest votes were eliminated, and in the end everything came to a standstill in the Teso-Lucas duel. Each one had 10 votes and they could not get out of there. Neither of them achieved the three-fifths majority of the plenary (12 votes) required by law, so the process began again with the seven initial candidates on the table.
Both Lucas and Teso are in the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, the one for Contentious-Administrative Matters, which decides on appointments. And, in recent times, they have decided on some that have to do with the Government. For example, that of Dolores Delgado, former Minister of Justice and former Attorney General of the State, as Prosecutor of the Human Rights and Democratic Memory Chamber. It is an appointment that corresponds to the Government at the proposal of the Attorney General of the State. In May, the Third Chamber annulled the appointment and agreed that the Fiscal Council would decide whether Delgado met the requirements or was incompatible with the position because her husband, Baltasar Garzón, presides over a foundation dedicated to human rights and historical memory. Pablo Lucas supported this decision. Pilar Teso made a dissenting opinion. (Finally, the Fiscal Council approved Delgado’s compatibility for the position). “Pilar Teso has been the Government’s candidate for some time,” say the conservative sector. The Executive categorically denies it.
Who should make the proposal?
In the background, there is another question: who is responsible for proposing the candidate? Taking into account the current majorities in the Congress of Deputies, the progressive sector considers that it is reasonable for the proposal to come from their side. “We have proposed three people of recognised solvency and track record,” says one of the progressive members. “The logical thing would be for them to explain to us why our candidates do not seem suitable to them and for negotiations to take place from there. And, furthermore, the most reasonable thing would be to talk not only about names but about the government project for the entire mandate.” The conservative sector says that what is urgent now is to talk about names and to choose the president, and to talk about the CVs of each one.
After Teso and Lucas’s 10-10, everyone was aware that it was necessary to negotiate. A team was formed on each side to try to reach an agreement and prevent the CGPJ from falling into disrepute again; to reach the solemn opening of the judicial year, presided over by the King, with a president in office and a first failure of the new body, the one whose main mission was to restore the lost prestige.
How do we get out of this quagmire? The progressives have two more candidates: Ana Ferrer and Ángeles Huet. Ferrer has a very long and extensive career as a judge – she was the first woman to form par
t of the Criminal Division of the Supreme Court. She is attached to Judges for Democracy (JJpD), which for some members of the conservative sector is a problem. “Ana Ferrer has always been closely linked to the official sector of JJpD, she is very ideologically marked,” says a member. “We believe that someone more neutral and independent is needed to represent us all.” From the progressive sector they assure that Ferrer has always maintained a proven and absolute independence from the parties, that she defended that the conviction for embezzlement of the former Andalusian socialist president José Antonio Griñán should be annulled, but that she was also in the court of the process chaired by Manuel Marchena, who supported a ruling that was not what the socialist government wanted. “He is someone who has always decided what he wanted, exclusively based on his legal considerations,” they say.
Can the candidacies be opened beyond the current seven names? “This would mean not assuming the rules that we ourselves approved to make this appointment, which was to stick to the candidates we chose in the first instance, and could involve problems of legality,” say those from the progressive sector.
In any case, and at least, the relationship between the two sectors is very good for the moment. The members consulted appreciate the impeccable manners that have been maintained both in the plenary sessions and in the negotiations and they trust that they will be able to reach an agreement. They are all aware of the abyss that not reaching an agreement represents. But they do not have many days left. The president of the Supreme Court and the CGPJ must take an oath or promise before the King. And the appointment at Zarzuela is on Wednesday, September 4. If they want to save the honor of the body, their own and not reach the opening of the judicial year without a president, the hours for negotiation are numbered. Once again, the CGPJ is negotiating. in extremis.
#Countdown #extremis #save #General #Council #Judiciary
