• Direct. Last minute on the coronavirus crisis

  • Warning: The Minister of Justice advises the Government not to postpone the elections

  • Forecast: The Electoral Board warns that the delay of the Catalan elections is unprecedented and would be open to challenge

The Government wielded dire predictions of contagions yesterday to try to bend the resistance of the PSC to postpone the Catalan regional elections until the third wave of the pandemic has been overcome.

After enlisting in maintaining its celebration on February 14, the Socialists now accept to postpone them only to March 21 so as not to see the

Illa effect

diluted

.

The Catalan Executive, however, proposes a postponement until after Easter and thinks of May 16 to go to the ballot box

s with full sanitary guarantees.The reports of the Department of Health of the Generalitat presented to the parties - and to which EL MUNDO has had access - predict an outbreak of the pandemic that could result in that on February 14, up to 9,000 infections were registered in Catalonia, double the current 4,500. That is the most pessimistic scenario of what is drawn by the Generalitat;

the one that would occur if the virus containment measures applied after the Christmas holidays and yesterday extended did not work.

In this case, the Catalan Government warns, there would be almost 1,200 admitted to ICUs in the region for the current 500.The most favorable projection predicts 3,000 infections a day and all place the peak of admissions in intensive care units between 3 and 3 February 7, that is, in the middle of the electoral campaign. The Catalan Executive also warns in its report that the forecast of its health technicians "does not include accelerations in the speed of propagation such as those observed in the United Kingdom and Ireland" with the appearance of the new strain of Covid-19.

And he warns that "this possibility cannot be ruled out in any case." The reports also underline that even in the most positive of predictions it would be "very difficult to make a detailed tracing of all the chains of infections" that would occur while the parties decide their options in the campaign.

And he concludes that "the epidemic predictions and healthcare pressure do not allow ruling out that the measures currently in force have to be hardened." With these strong arguments, the Government will attend the final meeting with the Catalan parties today in which it will propose to postpone the elections until May .

The intention of the Executive composed of ERC and JxCat is to leave the conclave with an agreement between all the formations that avoids the challenge of the electoral delay.

However, the Generalitat is already shielding itself against possible appeals before the Central Electoral Board or the courts. Legal sources of the Catalan Government pointed out yesterday to this newspaper that, if necessary, they will brandish the decree to call the elections, published in the BOE on December 22 and uncontested, to defend that the calling of elections was already provided for in the order itself signed by the acting president of the Generalitat and ERC candidate, Pere Aragonès, and is that, indeed, the decree of convocation Election establishes that “if for reasons derived from the protection of the right to health in the face of the health emergency situation caused by the pandemic generated by Covid-19, the development of the electoral process could not be carried out with the guarantees of health necessary public, this call may be annulled and the vote postponed to a later date that offers such guarantees. ”The Electoral Board

The Central cited this exception to the Generalitat decree in an agreement issued on January 7 to reject the request of the minority party Suport Civil Català, which had demanded that the body suspend the collection of guarantees due to the current pandemic situation or the suspension of the electoral call for February 14.

The Electoral Board declared itself incompetent to exempt training from collecting guarantees, but it did underline that the decree itself calling for elections to the Parliament provided for "postponing the vote" for health reasons, as the Catalan Government now intends to wield. The Central Electoral Board assured EL MUNDO the day before yesterday that "any decision taken" regarding the calling off of the elections "would be open to challenge", but predicted the courts would protect the elections to be delayed to clear the risk of massive contagion in the polling stations attending to public health reasons, such as those that the Generalitat intends to offer.

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