Friday, March 29

A court condemns Vox for violating the fundamental rights of a candidate for the Granada primaries


The Court of First Instance 6 of Granada has condemned Vox for violating the “fundamental right of democratic participation of the actors” of a candidate who presented himself in the 2020 primaries and who could not even attend the final vote. The ruling, of 37 pages and to which this medium has had access, also obliges the party to pay compensation of 72,000 euros (24,000 euros for each of the three plaintiffs), as well as the payment of costs, as the court understands that the manipulation of the electoral process did take place. Justice understands that the candidate Ignacio Pozo was prejudiced against the then acting president and official candidate Manuel Martín.

Justice annuls the Vox primaries in Granada upon appreciating alleged irregularities in the process

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The sentence, against which it is possible to appeal before the Provincial Court of Granada, is blunt when it comes to pointing out that the far-right formation manipulated the minutes and resolutions of the Electoral Committee (CEL) to prevent Pozo from competing for the presidency with Martín . Specifically, one of the key points of the court’s decision is that the way in which 15 endorsements of the complainant candidacy were annulled turned out to be unclear and susceptible to manipulation. In fact, the court recalls that, while excessive zeal was put into these guarantees, three that had not been presented as candidates were considered valid.

“We find that endorsements given to affiliates who had not even presented themselves as candidates are considered valid, while endorsements are declared null and void for candidacies that had been officially presented as that of the actors, without knowing the reason why they were presented. had been annulled, nor the identity of the affiliates who had issued these guarantees declared null, all in order to verify the veracity of what was resolved by the CEL, ”says the court in the sentence. An issue that for the judge is the “Gordian knot” that explains the manipulation of the process.

However, already during the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office positioned itself on the side of the plaintiff’s candidacy when appreciating possible irregularities in the Vox primaries in Granada. During the hearing, held on June 3 after being postponed on May 12, the Public Prosecutor’s Office developed an argument in which it opted for Ignacio Pozo and not for the official candidacy of Manuel Martín, who is a close friend of the national president. of Vox, Santiago Abascal. According to legal sources of the case, the Public Prosecutor was clear in the trial that the computer system and the guarantees could be manipulated to favor the apparatus closest to the national direction of Vox.

Two years of political and judicial battle

The facts have given rise to this sentence correspond to the internal elections for the local presidency of the party in 2020. In that year, as a result of a process of renovation of structures carried out throughout the country, the Granada leadership of Vox launched their primaries to elect their new leaders. Until that moment, the formation had been directed by a manager placed after the departure of its former president, Julio Vao, when it transpired that she had committed a crime of fraud years ago. That manager was headed by Manuel Martín, a politician on everyone’s lips recently for being the ‘landlord’ of Macarena Olona in the case of her registration in possible “fraud of law” in one of her homes in Salobreña (Granada) and a close friend of the national president of Vox, Santiago Abascal.

In these primaries, whose process began in September 2020, up to five candidates were presented, but only Martín himself reached the final votes, who opted for the presidency with his own list, considered by the entire apparatus as the official and the designated by the party leadership in Madrid. The fact that only Manuel Martín could finish the race for the presidency and that the rest of the rivals stayed on the road raised suspicions among the affiliates and especially in his strongest rival: the lawyer Ignacio Pozo.

From the first moment, his team denounced irregularities in the internal elections and first filed a complaint with the Vox electoral committee and later, after verifying that their protests were not taken into account, Pozo’s candidacy filed a complaint for the violation of fundamental rights by preventing him from participate in the primaries and requested the suspension and annulment of the process. A lawsuit that months later resulted in the precautionary suspension of the internal elections and that, after a Vox appeal, has given rise to the trial that has been held in the Court of Instruction 6 of Granada and that has lasted around five hours.

A suspicious management

Among the aspects that Ignacio Pozo and his team understood to be irregularities, the management of guarantees and the allegedly fraudulent use of the computer system stand out above all. On the one hand, although Pozo assures that he presented 120 endorsements (78 was the minimum necessary), the Provincial Executive Committee (CEP) did not validate all of them and left him out of the race for the presidency. At the same time, according to his argument, to which justice has given credit, Manuel Martín’s candidacy had presented endorsements from militants who did not even meet the requirements to participate in the elections.

In addition, Ignacio Pozo’s team has always maintained that several Vox elected officials in public institutions had shown their explicit support for Manuel Martín’s candidacy during the candidacy presentation process, clearly decanting the primaries. On the other hand, some of these militants even harassed others to condition their vote, assuring that they were speaking on behalf of high-ranking officials such as Macarena Olona.

All this was collected in a lawsuit that now, after the precautionary measures and the aforementioned appeal, already has a sentence, although this has been delayed in time since it could not be resolved as it coincided in time with the electoral campaign for the last regional elections. of Andalusia on June 19. There cannot be a judicial ruling against a political party that attends these elections during the campaign. For this reason, from Ignacio Pozo’s environment they assume that Vox caused the first postponement of the trial on May 12 so that the sentence did not take place before the Andalusian elections and did not affect his electoral possibilities.

It should be remembered that Manuel Martín, who has not been president for months as a result of the controversies generated by this alleged manipulation of the primaries and who has been replaced by a former Ciudadanos militant, has been a close friend of Santiago Abascal since both coincided politically in the PP of the Basque Country and they have spent the summer together since the 1990s. For this reason, from the Vox militancy it is assumed that there was a “big deal” to put Martín at the head of the party in Granada and thus control the local leadership to avoid dissenting voices.

For its part, Vox has argued that the entire process was “guaranteed” and that it was done correctly. In fact, the general secretary of Vox, Javier Ortega Smith, participated by videoconference in the trial to defend the cleanliness of the process, accompanied in the session by up to a dozen militants and relevant positions of the far-right party, among which were found Manuel Martín himself. However, this medium has contacted the party to ask about his position before the sentence and if an appeal is going to be filed, but there has been no response.



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