The attitude of some members of the Popular Party and the General Council of the Judiciary regarding the renewal of the governing body of judges and members of the Constitutional Court, after almost four years of intolerable blockage in the first case and almost two months in the second, has crossed any minimal line of shame and decency within a country that proclaims itself as an advanced and consolidated democracy.
Almost no one doubts that maintaining a certain degree of discretion in any negotiation is advisable in order to avoid interested leaks in breaking what is trying to be shaped, just as it is also prudent in all orders of life. These premises are not in question. What is debatable, in the specific case of negotiations for the renewal of the members of the General Council of the Judiciary or for the election of the new members of the Constitutional Court, is whether they deserve the treatment that we have given so far to those who have repeatedly and recurrently violated the Constitution and the laws, basic pillars of our democracy, because our preached discretion could be confused with opacity and the observance of prudence with cowardice.
Let me explain. More tepidity is not acceptable with this issue because it is not minor, but nuclear, and because it threatens democracy itself, the Constitution and the laws. They cannot and should not be allowed even a moment longer, neither as leaders of a political party nor as members of the Council, to continue laughing in the face of all Spaniards, appealing to a consensus that they neither desire nor pursue, under the protection of a pleiad of excuses, widely glossed over in multiple articles, perfectly known by readers and that I will not repeat but that clearly demonstrate their lack of shame and decency.
Lack of shame because they have used in a twisted way, as a weapon to block the renewal, a false prior need to address the reform of the system of election of the members of the Council knowing that the current system is fully constitutional. It is to the point that, having governed until 2018 and in some of them with an absolute majority, they kept the current model intact, even propping it up in such a way that, in Organic Law 4/2013, of June 28, reforming the General Council of the Judiciary - popularly known as the Gallardón Law - in section V, in fine, of its preamble, as justification for the change of the majority system for the adoption of the Council's decisions, they allude to overcoming one of the biggest problems: "the blockage in decision-making". Does that sound familiar?
Lack of shame because they have paraded through Europe discrediting our country, comparing our situation with that of the judiciary in Poland, and because, recurrently, they have relied on mere recommendations from the Greco or the Venice Commission, elevating them to the category of mandatory conditions under penalty of expulsion from the European Union. At the same time, they have intentionally concealed that the General Council of the Judiciary is not a jurisdictional body, nor can it be confused with the judiciary, nor is it the body representing the judges, as our Constitutional Court took care to specify in its Judgment 45/86, of April 17, and ignoring, by the way, the heterogeneous systems of election of bodies similar to the Spanish Council existing in France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium or Italy.
Lack of shame because they have not stopped proclaiming themselves champions of Spanish constitutionalism, while grossly kicking our Magna Carta and the laws that interest them for years, arbitrating all kinds of tricks, traps and lies to violate them and, to add insult to injury, boasting about it under the slogan that their position is modern, pedagogical and Europeanist, according to the statement of the illustrious Javier Maroto. Because they do not care, nor have they cared to leave in the lurch the one who was during these last years their reference in the Spanish judiciary, the former president of the Council, Mr. Lesmes, a man who required the Congress and the Senate to comply with our obligation in the election of the new members of the Council, even if he did so in a deceitful way, because he knew, better than anyone, that the Popular Party would not be willing to produce the renewal.
Lack of shame because, on the one hand, they appeal in a supervening way to judicial independence and, on the other hand, however, they do not hesitate to call converts those judges or magistrates who, having been proposed by the leadership of their party for their designation as members of the Council, dare to contravene their instructions afterwards. This circumstance could be verified in the Senate when debating the interpellation that Senator Martínez-Maíllo addressed to the Minister of the Interior, Grande Marlaska, on the priorities of his Ministry. Maíllo dixit,: "Because I was a coordinator just as you were a member of the Council of the Judiciary proposed by the Popular Party, exactly the same (applause). Look, I think you preach the faith of the convert". Clear interpellation and applauded by his colleagues... In short, now we know that the members of the Council of the Judiciary designated or appointed at the proposal of the Popular Party are comparable to the coordinators of that party.
Well, if the above is serious, that is, the absolutist conception that the leadership of the Popular Party has of the governing body of the judges - here fits the "in front" and "behind" - even more serious is, if possible, that the members of that body appointed at the proposal of the Popular Party suffer the "happy slave syndrome" and comply, without protest, with all those orders that emanate from Genoa, their master, because that is the source of their lack of decency.
Lack of decency when they lose their independence and dare to invoke a non-existent right to be heard preceptively in the process of a legislative initiative that, by its origin, does not carry such an item, and that they had never invoked before in similar cases... It will be because the political party now instigating is not their master.
There is a lack of decency when those appointed proposed by the Popular Party join in a partnership to defy compliance with a law approved by the legislature in a democratic state and the rule of law, and publicize, to further scorn democracy, that they are going to lunch to trace the roadmap to consummate the insubordination. Or when they excuse the occupation of their agendas or the lack of time to meet... anything to block and prevent the appointments of the new magistrates of the Constitutional Court.
There is a lack of decency when a colleague of the Council is accused, for her signature on the request for a pardon, of a lack of due neutrality and prudence that the Council must display, being those who do so the authors of the facts narrated here, typical of the most staunch hooligans of a political party.
But, the most aberrant and lacerating of the attitudes of those who lack shame and decency, is the damage they are doing in public opinion, which does not distinguish between the Council and the more than five thousand members of the Spanish judiciary who, in 99 percent, consider themselves independent and who, day by day, diligently and commendably fulfill their task in our country. And this, overcoming structural deficiencies of a judicial system that demands, like water in May, a great inclusive and transversal pact for justice in Spain to comply with the obligation to provide this essential public service with full guarantee of quality, effectiveness and efficiency.
Given what has been happening for too long and without a hint that those who deliberately violate the Constitution and the laws have shown the slightest symptom of amending their behavior, it is imperative, urgently, to end this democratic anomaly by continuing with the legal procedures in the Congress and the Senate for the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary and the members of the Constitutional Court that we have to elect - only in the Senate, in the latter case. Once the result has been obtained, in case of blockage, it would be necessary to better explain in Europe who are the authors of the same and, at the same time, to proceed with the legal modifications that are pertinent, including those that contemplate the change of the majorities necessary for the designation of the components of the Council and the Constitutional Court, returning normality to said bodies.
The opposite would be to play the game by omission to those who lack democratic shame and decency, because the strengthening of institutions is achieved with the fulfillment of the law, even if you do not like that law now.
Manuel Fajardo, Senator for Lanzarote and La Graciosa
