In the campaign of the last general elections, Pedro Sanchez promised to bring the fugitive back to Spain Carles Puigdemont to answer before the Justice for the illegal referendum of October 1 and everything that preceded it.
By then all of Spain was aware of the president’s volatility. in those that Sánchez He gave an interview to RNE and the skeptical announcer asked him how he intended to do it if the former president was entrenched in Waterloo. And the socialist leader, angry, responded with his already mythical: «Who does the Prosecutor’s Office depend on, who does it depend on? The Government? Well, that’s it.”
This Sunday makes just three years of that start of Sánchez on public radio, a distant November 6, 2019. Of course the president has not put Puigdemont available to the Supreme Court, nor have they rendered accounts Toni Comin, Clara Ponsatí in Martha Rovirafled to Belgium, Scotland and Switzerland, respectively.
Puigdemont flanked by Ponsatí and Comín
It’s more. Now the Government and ERC are working so that all of them can return as soon as possible, and not precisely to go to jail. So the pertinent question today would be another, paraphrasing Sánchez: Who does the Government depend on, who does it depend on? Well, that’s it.
The huge mortgage with ERC
The decision of Sánchez to go ahead with the reform of the crime of sedition has once again revealed the enormous mortgage of the Prime Minister with Esquerra. So great as to put it before not only the pact with Alberto Núñez Feijóo for the renewal of the CGPJ and the Constitutional Court, but also to the electoral interests of the PSOE in the municipal and regional elections in May.
The republicans celebrate this Sunday the twenty-ninth national congress of the party, in which Oriol Junqueras he will be elected president again by acclamation and without any internal contestation. His is, in fact, the only candidacy that has been presented. The general secretary of the ERC will continue to be Martha Rovirawho has lived in Geneva since his escape. Peter Aragonésfor his part, will continue as general coordinator and therefore number three.
Junqueras arrives at the ERC congress with the reform of the crime of sedition as a trophy under his arm
Reeds, which does not stitch without thread, wanted to arrive at this internal conclave with a trophy. One that proves the power of ERC on the national political board, after weeks in which Esquerra’s weaknesses have been seen after the breakup of the Government with Junts per Catalunya. And what better trophy than the reform of the crime for which he himself and eight other pro-independence leaders were sentenced by the Supreme Court to between 13 and nine years in prison –later pardoned by the Government–.
Probably yes Sánchez he could have postponed the making of the tailored suit of the Penal Code to favor the fugitive independence fighters and the pardoned ones he would have done. But he can’t, he’s not the one who manages the times. It is not, therefore, a matter of obstinacy on the part of the leader of the Socialists, nor of convictions, but of pure survival.
Only with ERC and its 13 seats will he be able to finish the legislature and only with ERC will he be able to continue governing if feijóo the numbers do not come out in the general elections of December 2023. So aware are those of Reeds to have the upper hand that, during the last few days, they have not stopped boasting that the breakdown of the bridges between the PSOE and the PP does not affect in the least the “dejudicialization process” that is on the table of dialogue between the Government and the Generalitat.
The Monclovita choir sings incessantly that this sedition is not going to take its toll on them, that it is solo to harmonize Spanish legislation with that of countries such as France, Italy and Germany. When the reality is Sánchez it has opened a Pandora’s box that cannot bring anything good for the socialists.
It’s not just cheapening crime
The President of the Government knows that Esquerra will not settle for a reduction in the price of the crime of sedition that would rehabilitate those pardoned for public office –Junqueras could attend the general elections and Rovira, even the municipal ones–. The ERC negotiators have already let you know.
Reeds he also wants the socialists to agree to reformulate article 544 of the Penal Code, so that committing sedition is a condition sine qua non the use of violence. They have assumed that sedition will not disappear from the Penal Code, but this would be the closest thing to a covert annulment.
This would prevent the fugitives from being convicted of sedition if one day they came to trial. And, above all, it would be a guarantee if one day the independence movement goes beyond the “we will do it again» (we will do it again) to the facts. That is the great objective of the Republicans, regardless of whether the crime of sedition goes from a maximum prison sentence of 15 years to four, five or six.
Currently, this article defines those accused of sedition as those who “risen publicly and in a mob to prevent, by force or outside the legal channels, the application of the Laws or to any authority, official corporation or public official, the legitimate exercise of their functions or the fulfillment of their agreements, or of the administrative or judicial resolutions”. In addition to force, 544 of the Penal Code mentions non-compliance with the laws. That’s the part that ERC wants to delete.
how much yield Sánchez in this unequal negotiation with Reeds The candidates who in only six months will have to be examined at the polls will be very attentive. Nervousness spreads in the socialist ranks. The quicksand of sedition can swallow more than one candidate, no matter how hard Moncloa and Ferraz insist on calling for calm.
There is nothing more to remember what happened in the Andalusian elections. the alliance of Sánchez -and by extension, of the socialists- with Bildu and ERC was one of the main assets of Juanma Moreno In bell. Much more than the embezzlement of the ERE, which he barely mentioned (the popular argued that the page had to be turned). And the Andalusian president got an overwhelming absolute majority.
Two days after those elections, Bildu’s spokeswoman in Congress, Mertxe AizpuruaHe stated at a press conference: «Pedro Sanchez It has two options: either it reinforces what it has, which I think is what it should do, or it agrees with the PP, which would mean the end of the PSOE forever. Said and done.