Laura Borràs arrived at the Parliament of Catalonia promising that she would act differently from Roger Torrent but, when the time has come to suspend a deputy, the current head of the Chamber has proceeded in a way that is practically traced to her predecessor. This Wednesday the pro-independence groups have agreed on a resolution in which they reiterate that the representative of the CUP, Pau Juvillà, maintains his seat, but in which they assure that “the limit to political disobedience to the repression of the State passes through preserving the officials from any type of criminal and accounting liability for which they may be prosecuted”. With this phrase they let the officials themselves execute the suspension.
The Parliament continues to maintain that the CUP deputy Pau Juvillà, disqualified in a non-final sentence for disobedience, maintains his seat in the Chamber against the criteria of the Central Electoral Board. This Wednesday the Commission of the Statute of the Deputy has met to deal with his case and has approved an opinion in which he considers that Juvillà will cease to be a deputy at the moment that there is a disqualification by final sentence, that is, when the Supreme Court confirms the sentence of the Catalan High Court.
However, the resolution approved by the commission reverses the discourse that the pro-independence majority had maintained up to now, which held that Juvillà should maintain its activity until the sentence was final. Now, the Commission considers instead that the deputy can lose his seat even if the sentence is not final, as long as the Supreme Court has dismissed the precautionary measures. This decision may take a few weeks, but it will come before the final sentence on the disqualification.
The JEC had given the president Laura Borràs until this Friday to execute the reiterated seat. The Electoral referee had previously considered that Pau Juvillà, who was a deputy and third secretary of the Bureau of the Parliament of Catalonia, had lost the seat with the disqualification sentence. Last week he went a step further and ordered the president of the Catalan chamber to replace the parliamentarian sentenced to six months of disqualification from public office for a crime of disobedience for not removing four yellow ties.
The response of the Parliament has been given through the Commission of the Statute of the Deputy, with an opinion that must be submitted later to a plenary session. In the commission, the representative of the PSC has defended his negative vote on the text, considering that the Chamber exceeds its limits. “It is not the responsibility of this commission to rule on resolutions of other bodies. The resolution of the Electoral Board is executive and therefore the Parliament cannot make resolutions against compliance,” said David Pérez.
The situation is analogous to that experienced in January 2020, when the Electoral Board demanded the reiteration of Quim Torra’s seat, also convicted in the first instance of disobedience. On that occasion, the Parliament also declared that Torra kept his position as deputy, but finally the then president of the Chamber Roger Torrent left in the hands of officials the execution. On January 27, Torra could no longer vote in plenary, which caused a notorious political anger between the partners. “When democratic institutions do not defend the democratic will, they are degraded,” Torra made Torrent ugly on that occasion.
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