The president of the Parlament, Laura Borràs, has explained to the groups of the Chamber some of the details about the loss of the seat of the deputy of the CUP Pau Juvillà, disqualified due to a non-final sentence. She has done it openly before the cameras within the framework of the Board of Spokespersons, a week and a half after the events occurred, and after strong pressure from the groups to obtain the explanations that Borràs had not given. The story of the head of the Legislature has fled from assuming any responsibility in the first person and has limited herself to blaming the officials of the Chamber, whom she has blamed for withdrawing the seat on their own, disobeying the Plenary and without receiving any political order. for your part.
Despite the evidence, which shows that Pau Juvillà was not allowed to have any parliamentary participation since Thursday, February 3, when the final requirement of the Central Electoral Board arrived, Borràs has denied before the groups that she gave any order to remove to the deputy of the CUP. According to her version, she had no responsibility in that Juvillà was not summoned to the table meetings that week nor to the plenary session. Regarding the fact that she herself did not allow the deputy to delegate her vote, Borràs has maintained the pretext that it was to avoid a conflict of powers.
That same version has been maintained for what happened between February 3 and 4, when Juvillà finally ended up staying out of Parliament. On Thursday afternoon, Borràs recounted, “the general secretariat gave an instruction by legal imperative. In the communication it orders that the withdrawal of the seat be retroactive in order to protect the civil servants”, he has indicated regarding the actions of an official who he occupies the highest non-political position by appointment by Borràs herself.
From that order was when the different departments of the Chamber, led by their workers, began to comply with the order to remove Juvillà, such as deleting his record from the web or publishing his withdrawal in the Official Gazette of the Parliament, even before as ordered by the Board. But, in addition, Borràs has reported that even before the order of the general secretary, the officials on their own had deactivated the electronic registration system and also the plenary voting system, so the deputies had to vote by hand. raised.
For the president, these actions by officials were “totally inappropriate” and “are not admissible,” she said. For this reason Borràs has assured that she has requested a report on the internal situation that was generated. All in all, Borràs has not stated that she has lost confidence in the officials who occupy the positions of maximum internal power appointed by her. The officials’ statement is also a slightly different version to the one offered by Borràs last Monday, when she focused on the alleged responsibilities of the ERC and the CUP.
Despite these considerations, Borràs changed his tone during the reply and assured that he does not blame the officials, who, in his opinion, acted out of “fear”. “All the responsibility lies with the JEC, a body that has wanted to bypass Parliament,” he said. However, Borràs has also reiterated that, for the Parlament, Juvillà was a deputy until the general secretary ordered the withdrawal of his seat, thus understanding that the decision of an official is above the agreements of the plenary.
Along with this account of the events, Borràs has made three requests. The first is to make changes to the Parliament’s regulations to avoid a supposed ambiguity about the situation of deputies in the face of disqualifications. On the other hand, Borràs has spoken of the need to draw up a Catalan electoral law, a pending task for the Parliament for decades, which, however, would have no effect in situations such as that of Juvillà. Finally, the president of the Chamber has proposed to the parties that they propose in Congress to modify the central electoral law, to avoid that there may be disqualifications with non-final sentences.
Resignation petitions of non-independence
In a very infrequent format that, finally, has been an open Board of Spokespersons, the groups of the Chamber have had five minutes of intervention after the president’s speech. All the non-independence parties, PSC, Vox, comuns, Ciudadanos and PP, have been very harsh against the actions of the head of the Chamber, and all of them have asked for her resignation. The socialist deputy Raúl Moreno has accused Borràs of having degraded the institution with his “political contortionism”, while David Cid, of the comuns, has considered that the president “has gotten out of Parliament.”
From the CUP group, directly implicated for having lost a deputy in this episode, the deputy Eulàlia Reguant has avoided charging directly against Borràs, but has demanded explanations to find out why the decision voted by the plenary had not been upheld. “I am the first to not want to put the deputies under the spotlight, but in the end we find that all the explanations that are given to us have to do with the officials,” she reproached, to end up demanding that the independence movement make a better diagnosis about what has happened to act better in the following occasions.
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