Long night of negotiation for the first major pact between the Government and the opposition after two years of permanent war. PSOE and PP finalized on Wednesday night the closing of a great agreement that includes the renewal of the General Council of the Judicial Power (CGPJ), the council of RTVE, the Constitutional Court and the Ombudsman. The deadline is this Thursday, when half of the RTVE council is voted in Congress. At the last minute everything was being discussed, but especially about the PP’s vetoes of United We Can candidates. The popular ones accept that in some way the group of Churches will claim that they are in the Judiciary, but their vetoes delay everything.
In the last hours, the negotiation also began to discuss the numbers of the composition of the council beyond the proposal agreed beforehand between PSOE and PP that ten to ten members would be distributed. One of the most difficult issues to agree on is the presidency, which in theory, according to the agreement already very closed in recent months, would be for someone of consensus but with a progressive profile. The name of Pilar Teso continues to be the one with the most possibilities, although nobody rules out surprises at the last moment of the negotiation. The PP welcomes Teso’s option. What it does seem is that this time that name will be saved even when the agreement is announced, and it will only come out when the members name it, to prevent it from happening as with Judge Manuel Marchena.
His name as president of the Judicial Power was made known with the principle of agreement between the PSOE and the PP in 2018 and he ended up resigning when the popular ones attributed that thanks to him he could “control the Second Chamber” of the Supreme Court through the back door , the most important, which judges major crimes of corruption and you process. This time, much greater caution is being sought to prevent the pact from blowing up for the third time, since it was also practically closed in August 2020.
The battle this time is in the narrative of the agreement, in how it is told, because the PP negotiator, Teodoro García Egea, has played hard in the previous days ensuring that Podemos will not be on the council. The secretary general of the popular said on Monday on the COPE network that the Churches party will not “have people” in the governing body of the judges. And that was already accepted by the PSOE.
The great unknown is what presence those of Pablo Iglesias will have in the council, because the PSOE always said that they would be represented. From United We can transfer that they are convinced that the Socialists will not leave them out because that would be like saying “that they have changed partners” and now they want to make agreements with the PP.
United We can have assumed that this pact is negotiated with the popular and that the socialist sector does it, but provided that they have at least two representatives close to their political sensibilities. Otherwise, it would be a very serious rupture within the coalition that at this moment does not seem to be in the plans of the PSOE. This is the issue that is complicating the closing of the negotiation the most, which according to all the sources consulted is imminent but has not yet materialized despite the constant meetings and conversations between the two groups.
The PP will hold on to the fact that the two names proposed by United We can months ago have been excluded for the council: that of magistrate José Ricardo De Prada, key in the sentence of the Gürtel case that motivated the motion of censure that overthrew Mariano Rajoy, and therefore anathema to the PP, and Vicky Rosell, a judge who has been a deputy for United We Can and is now a government delegate against gender violence.
PP sources recognized this Wednesday that they were not going to “be able to prevent” United We from claiming as related other progressive magistrates of recognized prestige who are part of the final composition. As for example they pointed out to Judge Ignacio Espinosa, who is the uncle of the Minister of Consumer Affairs Alberto Garzón, but whose professional career is beyond doubt because he has been president of the Superior Court of Justice of La Rioja for 15 years. Espinosa has been a spokesperson for the progressive association Judges for Democracy.
In the PP they insist that Podemos “has been out of the negotiation” and point out that the 12 elected judges come from the list of 50 that the magistrates themselves drew up in 2018, so that they would not be proposed by Podemos there. The margin is in the eight members who are jurists and do not leave that list, in which the PP emphasizes that they must also be of “recognized prestige.”
Another of the discussions of the negotiation is how to incorporate the PNV, an ally of the Government that has always shown interest in being in this body in which historically it has had a representative, as did the CiU at the time, although now the independentists do not they seem interested. The position for a judge close to the nationalists seems safe, but it is not clear if it would be within the quota of the PSOE or that of the PP.
The Socialists would be in a very weak position if they distribute their quota among several, while the PP does not seem to have any intention of distributing its part with Vox, the other great party of the right at the moment. Citizens have been left out by their own decision because they do not share this form of choice of the Judicial Power. The popular would thus have a larger and more homogeneous bloc if the Socialists distribute their quota, despite the fact that the PSOE has 32 more seats than the PP and occupies the Government.
The pact fits into Casado’s strategy of moderating after the motion of censure in which he broke with Vox, but it is still sensitive to his interests because the context is that the popular are still closely harassed by the extreme right, which it has almost quadrupled them in seats in the Catalan elections and doubled in votes.
This Wednesday, the leader of the PP recognized for the first time the “short-term cost” that this break with Santiago Abascal’s party is supplying, but despite this he reaffirmed himself in continuing along that path of representing a moderate right center that deepen the separation with Vox. “I am not looking for any vote that does not seek to live together. I did take a step forward, and I will not back down, “Casado said in Congress, in a debate in which he moderated the tone regarding Sánchez.
The popular leader’s team knows that this agreement will be used by Santiago Abascal to wear down the PP, and that is why he wanted to wait to close it until the Catalan elections passed, to avoid the electoral cost. The pact comes, in fact, only ten days after those elections. Abascal anticipated charging Casado before knowing if there would be an agreement. “Mr. Casado, what a disservice you are doing yourself, what a disservice you are doing to your party and to Spain by saying that you want to agree with Pedro Sánchez, as if it were something other than agreeing with Iglesias,” he snapped in the debate.
The Vox leader accused the PP of even being an “accomplice” in the disturbances in the streets for his understanding with the Government. Vox threatens with a new motion of censure to continue trying to challenge the PP for the leadership of the opposition.
With the pulse on the right more than open, Casado is willing that the agreement with Sánchez for the renewal of the high institutions is not the last. The PP leader believes that he has to “widen the space of moderation”, as he proposed to Sánchez, so that the two can win within him, and that happens because he is “willing to stain himself” to reach agreements with the Executive .
The negotiation with the PP is supplying an added tension in the coalition, which is already experiencing moments of maximum internal difficulty due to the housing law, a key issue for United We Can and which is very far from an agreement. The group of Pablo Iglesias prefers that everything be negotiated within the investiture block and was a great defender of the legal reform that allowed the renewal of the Judicial Power without the PP. This rapprochement between popular and socialists tense the coalition, but Iglesias already made it clear on the platform that he believes that the great decisions of the country will be made within the investiture bloc and after this specific agreement the PP will stay out of them. The PSOE, on the other hand, is comfortable with the maximum possible consensus and unity with the opposition.
source https://pledgetimes.com/psoe-and-pp-finalize-a-great-pact-to-renew-four-key-organs/
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