The Constitutional Court prevents the fugitives from voting in the Parliament and makes it difficult for Puigdemont to participate in the election of the Board

The Constitutional Court has granted protection to the PSC in its appeal against several decisions of the Catalan Parliament that, in the last legislature, allowed deputy Lluís Puig (Junts) to vote electronically in the plenary sessions of the autonomous Chamber. The ruling annuls these agreements and concludes that they violated the rights of socialist deputies by creating an exception in the voting system that benefited another political group: Junts. The court emphasizes that the obligation to vote in person has exceptions, but these do not fit in the case of “who has voluntarily decided to evade the action of the Spanish criminal jurisdiction and who is subject to a search and arrest warrant.”

The resolution only has effect from the moment of its notification and publication, not retroactively. Therefore, the votes in which Puig would have intervened with that remote vote will not be altered. But it arrives a few days before, next Monday, June 10, the Parliament is constituted and the new legislature starts from the 12-M polls. Both Puig and the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, were elected deputies in those elections, but both live outside Spain, where they left in 2017 to avoid being tried for their role in the processes independence.

Neither of them will be able, therefore, to take advantage of the telematic vote for the election of the Board on Monday, unless the Chamber turns a deaf ear to what is ruled by the Constitutional Court. The decision on whether or not to abide by the ruling will foreseeably be made in that first session by the age table, made up of a deputy from Junts, another from ERC and another from Vox. Also the ERC deputy Rubén Wagensberg, accused in the Tsunami casehe went to Switzerland at the end of 2023 and remains there, but his situation is different because he is on sick leave, which is a reason for using proxy voting.

Junts has accepted the sentence with deep irritation. “Spanish parties always have the wild card of the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court to counteract the result of the polls. They never fail,” Jordi Turull, general secretary of Junts, stated through his X account (former Twitter). “And there is no need to write a letter to the citizens.” Esquerra has also condemned the decision of the Constitutional Court that seeks, they say, to “torpedo” the CUP’s plan to promote an “anti-repressive table”, that is, that the body allows all deputies living abroad who are fleeing from justice to vote. Spanish and that no debate is vetoed in the Plenary, reports Àngels Piñol. The Republicans also consider that the PSC has opened the door to other “coercive measures” with this resource. ERC promoted the temporary telematic vote so that Puig could vote while waiting for a reform of the Parliament’s regulations that he agreed with the anti-capitalists but that Junts ultimately did not support. The text declined with the electoral call.

The Constitutional ruling, which the court reported this Wednesday in a note, was adopted by the First Chamber last Monday, unanimously. The speaker was Judge María Luisa Segoviano, from the progressive sector. The court agrees with the deputies of the socialist parliamentary group in the Parliament in the previous legislature, who challenged the agreements that the Chamber Board had made on two occasions: on April 19, 2023 —when it accepted Lluís’ telematic vote Puig until the end of that period of sessions—and on April 18, 2023—when he approved a temporary regulation of telematic voting, in the absence of express support from the Regulations.

The Constitutional Court has considered that the Board thus violated the right of the appellant deputies. And therefore annuls all the contested Board agreements. The court considers that the approval of this regulation by the Parliament “was instrumental” and had an “exclusive purpose”, that of “trying to give the appearance of regulatory coverage to the authorization of Mr. Puig i Gordi to vote electronically to avoid previous pronouncements. of this court, but without a real vocation for generality.”

The guarantee body has previously accepted telematic voting in other cases, but highlights that this exception to in-person voting cannot be granted to “who has voluntarily decided to evade the action of the Spanish criminal jurisdiction and who is subject to a judicial search warrant and capture”, as happened in the case of Puig. The resolution emphasizes, however, that “those acts that had been adopted with the telematic vote of that deputy during the time in which said authorization was in force” are not annulled.

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