Direct. Last minute on the coronavirus crisis
Catalonia.The PSC is left alone demanding that the Catalan elections be maintained to save the Illa effect
Politics: Open war between ERC and JxCat to postpone the Catalan elections
As much as the extraordinary has become common in Catalonia, there is still plenty of room for surprise.
So that the institutional confusion does not lose ground.
The possibility of postponing the calling of the regional elections, to which almost all the major parties are already joining -with the striking exception of Minister Salvador Illa's PSC-, would encounter a legal problem no less: there is a kind of legal vacuum The Electoral Law does not stipulate what to do when
want to postpone elections that were already going to be held automatically and forcibly because the legal deadline for investing a new president has expired, after the
disqualification
of
Quim Torra
For breaching that same Electoral Law, we entered unknown territory.
If the call scheduled for February 14 were postponed, it would be the judges who would have to clear up the question of what to do when the Constitution requires elections to be held, but there is a pandemic ... and the population is not confined, but has freedom of movement.
The same freedom of movement to go to eat at a restaurant as to go to vote, it is understood. Members of the Central Electoral Board assure EL MUNDO that "any decision taken" in this regard "would be objectionable", but they add that the suspension of 14-F would be based on public health reasons that may suppose a waiver from the literality of the norm.
Health weighs more
Therefore, the first impression of the members of the Board consulted is that the courts would protect the elections to be delayed to clear the risk of massive infections in the polling stations.
That is, the PSC -which does not want to dilute the
Illa effect
- He could resort, but he has the chance to lose.
Health outweighs "the constitutional clock." What happens is that Catalonia has exhausted the maximum legal period - two months - to invest in a new president since Torra was evicted from office.
After that time, the elections were automatically called for 54 days later, on February 14.
But the norm does not contemplate what happens if that forced convocation cannot be held. "The electoral repetition would not be against any law, except because those maximum terms would be exceeded," points out another member of the Board.
It should be remembered that Catalonia does not have its own electoral law, at the convenience of the nationalist parties; the national norm benefits them, for the
D'Hondt system
distribution of seats.
Therefore, Catalonia does not have an autonomous Electoral Board either and must abide by the central body's designs, so if the Generalitat wants to endorse the postponement of the election, it must request a report from the Central Electoral Board.
This is, naturally, something that the independentistas abhor, since it would be as much as recognizing the legitimacy of who disqualified the former
president
Torra.
Two antecedents: Galicia and the Basque Country
Galicia
and the
Basque Country
They did request a report from the Electoral Board to postpone their regional elections, which were to be held on April 5, in the middle of the first wave of the
coronavirus
.
With favorable results, in both cases.
"It is not something mandatory, but it does serve to give more coverage to the decision," they clarify in the body that manages the electoral periods. But these cases are different from the Catalan, since in those two communities the population was confined in their homes when it was decided to delay the appointment with the polls.
In Catalonia now there is no confinement, and the Minister of Health and candidate does not foresee it, despite the fact that the
state of alarm
allows it.
JxCAT
and
ERC
, the elections would not be postponed, strictly speaking, but would be called again.
The current convening decree would have to be annulled and a new one approved.
And they would run again the 54 days until the appointment with the polls.
The solution: an agreement between parties
This is the term stipulated in article 42 of the Electoral Law.
They would be other different elections, in which the census, the lists, the candidates could be changed ... In the Board they believe that everything could be solved if an agreement is reached between all the parties and no one challenges it.
The body meets this Thursday, although it is not expected to address this issue. The magistrates and professors that comprise it privately complain that this legal vacuum is produced by not having reformed the Electoral Law in 2020 to anticipate these cases of force elderly and public health.
So Illa could be doubly responsible for what happens.
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