He General Council of the Judiciary, The Progressive Party, which was renewed after five and a half years with the mandate extended by the PP’s veto to lose influence in that governing body of the judges, has held its first meetings functioning as in the previous mandate by homogeneous blocks. In the session this Tuesday, scheduled to nominate the figure of its presidency, who has a casting vote, the 10 members of the progressive block and the 10 of the conservative sector have operated in unison. There has not been a single departure. The progressives opted for the profile of Pilar Teso, experienced, not affiliated with any association and independent. She would be the first woman to preside over the Judiciary. The conservative group rejected it outright. They defend that Pablo Lucas, their candidate, is more of a consensus, even progressive, and several of their members deny that “any positive discrimination” in favor of women is necessary.
None of the seven candidates running for president have managed to obtain the necessary majority (three-fifths of the members, that is, 12 votes) to be appointed, and the plenary has been called to a second meeting tomorrow Wednesday to continue debating, according to sources from the body, but without great hopes. Teso and Lucas have tied with ten votes in the last round of the seven votes held.
The positions at the meeting on Tuesday between the two blocks have been shown to be so distant and entrenched that for the internal sources consulted it is very difficult for the matter to be resolved on Wednesday and they are already calling for new discussions in September, after the summer. At the meeting on Tuesday the only transcendental point on the agenda was the nomination of the figure of the presidency and no progress has been made on the more than 120 positions pending renewal in High Courts of Justice of various autonomous regions or in Provincial Courts. Until now, in the history of the Council, the majority of the presidents have been of conservative origin and all men. The progressive sector understands that the time has come to change this tradition in both directions.
In theory, seven candidates had been accepted in the first vote, three progressives (all women) and four conservatives (two and two): Esperanza Córdoba, Antonio del Moral, Ana Ferrer, Ángeles Huet, Carmen Lamela, Pablo Lucas and Pilar Teso. Six votes were taken first, and in the seventh only the options of Teso and Lucas were accepted. Both sides have argued that their proposals were independent and based on consensus, and the sources confirmed that so far they have not observed any direct political interference in their debates. The progressive members have maintained that they had withdrawn the possibility of the Supreme Court judge Ana Ferrer because she does belong to the association Judges for Democracy, of that sensitivity. And they have argued that Teso is not in any association.
The discussion has since become bogged down in whether the presidential candidate should be a woman. The progressives have considered this an essential condition at this time, in order to send a clear message of “step forward and change to the citizens” with respect to the previous Councils. The conservatives have openly questioned this argument, even the members of this sector have assured that there was “no obligation or need” for the president to be a woman, nor in positive discrimination and that their priority was excellence, according to sources from the new CGPJ.
The progressive side then responded that since all the candidates are impeccable and meet the required quality requirements, Supreme Court magistrates or jurists with up to 25 years of recognized experience, the added message of modernity could be the arrival of a woman for the first time at the top of that institution. In the judicial career, 57% are already women, but they barely reach 21.1% in the Supreme Court compared to 78.9% of men. Despite this discussion, no one has questioned Teso’s curriculum and career, but the conservatives have remained “very entrenched” in that Pablo Lucas was “more of a consensus, because in reality he is progressive” and have also announced that these will be their future votes.
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Judge Lucas is recognized by the progressive sector for his “liberal background in a broad sense” and for his career, as a professor of Constitutional Law and now in charge of overseeing the work of the National Intelligence Center (CNI). But in progressive judicial circles it is noted that he has entered a drift against the current Government and the PSOE after his candidacy to fill a vacancy in the Constitutional Court failed on two occasions in recent years. Lucas was the rapporteur of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court that annulled the appointment of the former socialist minister Magdalena Valerio as president of the Council of State, agreed by this Government on October 31, 2022, because it considered that she did not meet the requirement of “jurist of recognized prestige” required by article 6 of the organic law that regulates the highest advisory body of the Government. Lucas was also one of the two speakers from the same chamber who annulled the appointment of former minister Dolores Delgado as prosecutor of the Human Rights and Democratic Memory Chamber, a position reserved for top-ranking prosecutors and whose appointment corresponds to the Government at the proposal of the head of the public ministry.
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