The Supreme Court’s decision to annul the promotion of the former state attorney general, Dolores Delgado, as courtroom prosecutor, has raised blisters among progressive prosecutors. The Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF), to which Delgado belongs and to which the current attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, belonged before reaching this position, considers that the sentence handed down this Tuesday by the Contentious-Administrative Chamber “ “annuls” the discretionary capacity of the head of the Prosecutor’s Office to make appointments and, in this way, “reduces the autonomy of the Prosecutor’s Office.”
The resolution of the high court, issued unanimously by five judges of different sensitivities, includes harsh criticism of García Ortiz’s actions, to which they attribute “diversion of power.” The magistrates consider that the motivation of the State Attorney General in proposing Delgado as head of the Togada Prosecutor’s Office – the military one – was to ensure him a promotion, and that with this he departed from his duty to fill the vacancies in the Prosecutor’s Office “fundamentally in accordance with to the criterion of merit.” Upon ceasing as Attorney General of the State, in July 2022, Delgado returned to her position as a rank-and-file prosecutor in the National Court, but, in September of that year, García Ortiz proposed her for courtroom prosecutor of the Togada Prosecutor’s Office, an appointment that he approved. the Council of Ministers.
Delgado is no longer a prosecutor in the Military court, because in June she was appointed prosecutor in the Human Rights and Democratic Memory court. However, this last appointment was possible because Delgado already had the highest category, so, with that first promotion annulled, the Prosecutor’s Office now has to see if that affects her current destiny. Fiscal sources assure that the Supreme Court’s decision does not affect her current position as head of the Democratic Memory Prosecutor’s Office, but legal sources indicate that it does. Delgado has announced in statements to SER that “he is going to fight” the sentence before the Constitutional Court, which he considers “unfair.”
While deciding how to carry out the sentence, progressive prosecutors expressed this Wednesday, in a statement, their disagreement with the arguments on which the Supreme Court’s decision is based. The UPF maintains that the now annulled appointment was based on the “extensive and reasoned” proposal of the State Attorney General in which reference was made to Delgado’s “vast resume and extensive experience” who, “along with his profound knowledge of the criminal jurisdiction, both in its institutional, organizational and managerial aspects” was “key” for the position of Court Prosecutor of the Robed Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court.
In a very detailed way, the prosecutor’s proposal referred to Delgado’s experience during almost 30 years of career in matters as complex as organized crime, the fight against terrorism and its financing, drug trafficking or money laundering, as well as her work for more than 13 years as a prosecutor in the National Court’s Prosecutor’s Office as coordinator against jihadist terrorism.
“We cannot understand that, having been included in such an extensive and reasoned manner in the proposal, our colleague’s curriculum vitae, it has not been evaluated, or even mentioned, by the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court,” complain the progressive prosecutors, who reproach the Supreme Court for the fact that the sentence does not include “any assessment of the extensive merits that the proposed candidate had to make her worthy of the position” of courtroom prosecutor of the Togada Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court.
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The UPF warns that the arguments on which the Supreme Court bases its decision and the mention of the “diversion of power” are based on the statements made by García Ortiz, “in the exercise of his autonomy”, about the convenience of State attorneys general who do not have the highest career category, be promoted when they leave office. Above all, affirms the progressive association, when “the merits and capacity are more than enough for the performance of the position.” “As an example, it is enough to remember that the same was done with the former State Attorney General, María José Segarra, said argument being then endorsed by the full Fiscal Council.”
“We are concerned about the basis for this ruling since the GRECO report [Grupo de Estados contra la Corrupción] of 2021 valued this same reasoning very positively, which is now disdained, as a way of reinforcing the autonomy of the figure of the State Attorney General,” he reminds UPF, which considers that Delgado has been “undervalued” “under the pretext of understanding that the intention was not to assert her merit and capacity, an issue that is clarified when reading the colleague’s resume.”
The UPF considers that the Supreme Court is repeating itself by annulling a discretionary appointment of the attorney general, in reference to the case of Eduardo Esteban, the Juvenile Court prosecutor, whose appointment the high court has overturned on two occasions. “We are facing a change not founded on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, where merits and capacity, as well as jurisdictional work, do not seem to be sufficient in the face of other claims that do not benefit the tax career and the public service that we provide to daily”, conclude the progressive prosecutors.
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