The Administrative Court of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has rejected the appeals that Gladys Acuña filed against the decision of the Provincial Electoral Board, which agreed to eliminate her candidacies to Parliament and the Cabildo, considering them illegal. Now, as she already announced at a press conference, Acuña will appeal to the Constitutional Court, which is the only avenue left after the judgments issued by the Court, which conclude that Acuña incurs in a cause of "ineligibility" for having been sentenced to two disqualification penalties in the Stratvs case for crimes against the Public Administration.
"The sentence was notified to me this Monday first thing in the morning, and from today we have two days to file the appeal before the Constitutional Court, and of course I will do it even if time is against me due to the Court's failure to meet the deadline for resolution and notification," Acuña stated after learning of the rulings, which are actually dated last Friday, the 3rd, and therefore within the expected timeframe.
However, the former mayor bases her criticism on the fact that she claims they were not notified to her until this Monday. However, Acuña assures that she remains "firm" in her idea of appealing the agreements adopted by the Electoral Board in order to have the "fundamental right" recognized that she believes she has to be both the candidate for the presidency of the Cabildo and the Parliament of the Canary Islands. "And if that were not the case, at least both myself and the rest of the candidates or those who find themselves in this same situation in the future, will not go through this situation of confusion in the face of the different interpretations of the Electoral Law," she pointed out.
"They are criminalizing me and our political project"
It should be remembered that it was Unidos por Lanzarote who challenged Gladys Acuña's candidacies, considering that she incurred in a cause of ineligibility due to her conviction in the Stratvs case. In fact, although in that ruling the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands sentenced her to 14 years of disqualification "for the exercise of representative municipal office", the Electoral Board concluded that this conviction disqualifies her from any type of public office, thus following the criterion recently established by the Supreme Court, in a ruling referring to the politician from Majorca, Domingo González Arroyo.
"Contemporary society demands that jobs and public offices with a representative base cannot be occupied by subjects who have been subject to special disqualification after a criminal conviction, regardless of the area of public administration in which the crime was committed," that ruling stated, in one of the fragments that the Court now reproduces to reject Acuña's appeals.
"They are criminalizing me and our political project," Gladys Acuña stated at a press conference she offered last Thursday, in which she announced that she had filed an administrative appeal against the decision of the Electoral Board, stating that, if rejected as it has been, she would study appealing "for protection" to the Constitutional Court. "Therefore, in the worst case scenario, in about nine days or so, and once all judicial possibilities have been exhausted, we will know whether or not I will be able to run in the elections," she said.
As she explained then, after filing the appeal with the Constitutional Court, it will have to be resolved "between three and five days". In addition, on May 14, the Supreme Court is scheduled to meet to deliberate and adopt a decision on the appeal for cassation filed by the former mayor against the Stratvs case ruling.
At that press conference, Acuña not only expressed her confidence in being able to run in the elections, but even did not rule out being included again on the CC list for Parliament, despite the fact that this formation had already appointed David de la Hoz as a replacement after the decision of the Electoral Board. "I have not spoken with CC regarding this matter. I do not know what CC is going to do and the legal possibility of returning to that list," she indicated.