2023-11-30 13:00:27
The political agreements for the approval of the future amnesty law are “a challenge to the constitutional order and this situation does not allow silence because it would be a complicit silence.” This is what the former president of the Constitutional Court (TC) Francisco Pérez de los Cobos has expressed. According to the wording, “today crimes or, for example, illegal accounting conduct may be taking place that would benefit from the amnesty,” he points out.
The investiture agreements between PSOE and Junts are an “amendment to the constitutional order” in which the amnesty constitutes “a relevant piece,” he said. And he has described as “obscene” the assumption of the “separatist story” by the ruling party.
“The story comes face to face with reality, which was not that, but that of an attempted coup d’état frustrated by the actions of the powers of the State” and cited the Constitutional Court, the actions of the judges and courts, of the security bodies and forces of the State and the King.
Although he acknowledges that he has tried to maintain a low profile since his departure from the court of guarantees and out of respect for the institution, he has considered that he has to fulfill his duty as a citizen to speak out in a situation that he considers “enormously worrying.”
He also spoke about the use of the term “lawfare” in the pact between PSOE and the pro-independence parties to invest Pedro Sánchez, a term that alludes to the instrumentalization of the courts for political purposes. Pérez de los Cobos has pointed out that it has delegitimizing effects on democracy. “It is purely and simply the acceptance that the jurisdictional activities carried out against the independentists who committed crimes, who committed administrative infractions, who committed accounting infractions, have constituted political processes”
For him, “the so-called judicialization of the Catalan conflict” has not been an “anomaly”, but rather a “manifestation that our rule of law has worked and, for now, still works” because whoever breaks the law is responsible for it.
This was stated at the “Constitution and Amnesty” table that took place today within the framework of the parliamentary sessions “Facing amnesty: equality, freedom and dignity”, organized by the PP in the Congress of Deputies, in which The emeritus magistrates of the TC Jorge Rodríguez Zapata and Andrés Ollero have also participated.
Amnesty is not constitutionally viable
Although he has recognized that he is a laborist, he has reviewed the constitutionalist doctrine, and concludes that the amnesty is not constitutional.
“Contrary to what the fallacious explanatory statement of the bill maintains, the Constitution does not grant the Cortes Generales absolute power,” said the former president of the TC.
In his speech, he pointed out that, unlike citizens, who can do what the law does not explicitly prohibit, the powers that be can only do what the Spanish Constitution expressly states. Therefore, the Cortes Generales must do what is established in article 66.2 of the Magna Carta.
In its powers, amnesty is excluded and only singular pardons have been established from the right of grace.
“The amnesty, the power to amnesty, represents an invasion by the Legislative Branch in the area that the Constitution reserves for the Judicial Branch,” as established by the reservation of jurisdiction, he recalled.
It also says that there are other constitutional principles that are incompatible with this grace measure that is being debated in the Lower House: the principle of legal certainty, the principle of equality before the law.
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