Last Friday, the Socialist Group in Congress presented a bill with the aim of preventing “harassment derived from abusive judicial actions”, limiting up to render practically useless the use of the constitutional instrument of popular accusation. To this end, among other changes, it intends to prohibit it to the parties and limit it to the oral trial part and the initial formulation of the complaint, excluding it from the investigation phase, whose leading role is reserved for the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
One of the aspects most criticized by both the opposition and all judicial associations is that the reform will be applicable to the processes that are ongoing, which would cause some cases that bother the Government to decline, specifically the one that follows against the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez, and the one that affects the attorney general, García Ortiz. In both, the Prosecutor’s Office has opposed the opening of proceedings, so if said law is approved they would be archived.
Although it is true that there has been a use of the popular accusation for spurious political purposes, especially by the parties, and that this is not the first time that an attempt has been made to reform it, The proposal smacks of a search for impunity for the cases cited. Critics of the figure of the popular accusation argue that it has no equivalent in Europe. But that is not a sufficient reason to disable it either. It was included in the Constitution, article 125, considering that citizenship is also part of Justice, as a progressive instrument, like the institution of the jury.
Globally, the popular accusation has taken the initiative in relevant media cases and has been useful where the Prosecutor’s Office was opposed or reluctant to investigate. There are many examples, such as the case of the Caja Madrid ‘black’ cards, which ended with a prison sentence for Rodrigo Rato; the Nóos case, which managed to include Infanta Cristina in a macro-trial; or the Gürtel case, which politically ended Mariano Rajoy.
Finally, the bill echoes a discourse that constantly questions the work of judges and belittles the fact that without neutral courts there is no democracy. To do this, he proposes expanding the reasons for his abstention and recusal, something that, in reality, as the judicial associations defend, is already well regulated. Likewise, formulates that complaints cannot be admitted without factual elementsbased exclusively on journalistic information. But the courts also apply that criterion, which is that of the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court. In short, the socialist proposal takes on the popular accusation and seeks a benefit with names and surnames.
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