The new acting president of the General Council of the Judiciary, the conservative Vicente Guilarte, chaired the first plenary session of the governing body of judges on Tuesday afternoon. A meeting called to address the main challenges of this institution and in which pessimism was palpable in the environment, according to several members. And it is that there is a general fear among the majority of the members of the council that the interim of the body will be “eternalized” after the devilish electoral results last Sunday.
Among the 16 interim ‘survivors’ that remain among the 20 theoretical members that the council should have, discouragement spreads and today several of them, outside the plenary session, confessed that they fear that the interim will continue for “several more years”. There are members of the Judiciary, who between ‘truths and jokes’, assured this Tuesday that they do not rule out, in view of the results of 23-J, that the blockade of the CGPJ could extend for a decade.
In reality, almost half of the time of that fateful prognosis has already been fulfilled, since the institution has been in an interim situation since December 4, 2018, due to the lack of a political agreement between PSOE and PP to renew it.
Guilarte, in the first meeting, presented a proposal to renew the commissions and separate critics against him
And these pessimistic members, who are not a minority on the council, remember that the entrenchment is getting worse as the two big parties are immunizing themselves to criticism and órdagos. The European Commission’s reproaches to Spain for the blockade have not made a dent; nor the resignation of Carlos Lesmes in October 2022 from the presidency after the failed ultimatum for both formations to understand each other; nor the unusual bicephaly in the Judiciary that was unleashed when the members refused to accept the interim vice president of the Supreme Court, Francisco Marín Castán, as the new acting head of both houses and enthroned Rafael Mozo, who retired last week, as acting president of the CGPJ.
The rebellion and Puigdemont
All the options that are looming for the long-awaited renovation are not rosy at all. Nobody believes that the PP would reach an agreement with Pedro Sánchez’s PSOE if the latter reached an agreement with the help of Junts and the fugitive Carles Puigdemont. They remember that the procés was the reason for the renewal attempt to fail in October. Then the popular ones refused to agree names with the socialists if the Executive did not stop the reform of the Criminal Code to end the crime of sedition and modify the embezzlement to satisfy the Catalan independentistas, partners of the central government.
Nor do they see in the CGPJ likely that the PP, now with a majority in Parliament, will renounce its project to modify the organic law so that it is the judges themselves and not the politicians who choose the members of the Judiciary. A reform that, as denounced by PSOE and Sumar, would in itself give the majority to the candidates of the conservative Professional Association of the Magistracy.
The other possibility, that of the blockade and the repetition of elections, is equally disastrous for a possible renewal, according to all the sources consulted from the institution. Some new elections at the end of the year –explain these same sources- and the expected delay for the composition of a Government would mean that the discussions on the unblocking of the CGPJ would not begin at the earliest before a year or a year and a half. Some calculations that would place any solution no earlier than 2025. And all this, without guarantees of an agreement, even returning to the polls.
Already in internal order, Guilarte stomped into the presidency. Despite his interim status, he presented a proposal to renew the members of all the commissions. His intention is that he himself become part of the Permanent Commission. Only full-time members can be part of this body. This same Tuesday, Guilarte presented the documents that prove that he has left the legal profession and teaching to try to join this commission as soon as possible, which is the one that calls the shots every day. In addition, he has proposed that the four members who, in a meeting held on Monday, demanded that Guilarte prove that he had initiated the procedures to leave his position, leave that same body. They are Álvaro Cuesta, Juan Martínez Moya, Juan Manuel Fernández and Nuria Díaz Abad.
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