Sánchez admits that he does not like Arnaldo but asks to “save the agreement” with the PP

The vote will be done secretly and electronically (due to the pandemic) and the episode has ingredients to maintain the tension until the last minute, when the president of Congress, Meritxell Batet announce the result Thursday at noon. The renewal of the Tribunal Constitutional, agreed between government of coalition and the PP, Pedro Sánchez has been choked up above all. Its negotiating minister, the head of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, agreed with the general secretary of the popular, Teodoro García Egea, the four names of the candidates that the two main parties have agreed to propose and support: the PSOE proposed to Immaculate Montalbán; United We Can, to Juan Ramón Sáez, and the PP, to Conception Espejel and Enrique Arnaldo, the most questioned name of all. If the agreement had all the support of the coalition Executive and the PP, those names should come out with at least 243 Yes it is. The fissures, however, due to Arnaldo’s acceptance threaten that he will reap some less. The minimum necessary for the vote to prosper are 210 deputies, three-fifths of the seats in Congress, and the leadership of the PSOE assumes that it will be reached because, as it has reminded its parliamentarians these days, in the party there are “Voting Discipline”.

The discomfort for having included the name of Enrique Arnaldo in the negotiation reaches even Sánchez himself, who this Wednesday admitted him in the debate in Congress on the European summits. “I do not like some of the candidates for the Constitutional Court, but the duty of the Government of Spain, and here I appreciate the position of the PSOE and United We Can, is to save the agreement to renew the constitutional institutions and allow it to be unblocked and renewed those institutions, “he said. The Constitutional Court is one of the four bodies, in addition to the Court of Accounts, the Ombudsman and the Data Protection Agency, which three weeks ago agreed to renew the Executive and the PP. The General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ) is still pending.

Calls from the Sánchez’s party leadership his 120 deputies to tie the votes have multiplied in recent days. Socialist deputy Odón Elorza, who was very critical when Arnaldo appeared last week in the appointments committee, does not want to clarify what he will do. Also at United We Can, the proposal has raised blisters. In fact, its representative on the Board of Congress, the third vice president, Gloria Elizo; Deputy María del Carmen Pita and the Minister of Migration Policies and Justice of the Navarrese Government, Eduardo Santos, have written an article in ‘El Periódico de España’ to express their disagreement with the inclusion of Arnaldo in the Constitutional renewal quota.

Yolanda Díaz, third vice president of the Government and leader of the purple in the Executive, considers that the PP “has not been up to the task” with the election of those candidates and “puts at risk” judicial independence.

The president of the United We Can parliamentary group, Jaume AsensHe has said his deputies will vote for the four proposed, to comply with the pact, but that the future magistrate does not meet the exemplary conditions to occupy the position. He will include his name in the secret ballot, but “with a nose clip.”

Since Enrique Arnaldo’s name was put on the table, his resume and private activities of which he is also a lawyer in the Congress of Deputies. His professional life reveals numerous links with the PP, including politicians such as the former president of the PP convicted of corruption Jaume Matas, with the FAES Foundation and newspaper articles ridiculing the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and minimizing box b of the popular ones when the so-called ‘Bárcenas papers’ came out.

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Pablo Married, which continues to prevent the renewal of the CGPJ, because it requires changing the law to give more power to judges and provide them with “greater independence “ of political power, remains silent after having proposed Arnaldo.

The acceptance of the lawyer of the Cortes is also frowned upon by the minority partners of the Government. This has been said to Sánchez this Thursday in the debate that has been held in Congress. Inigo Errejon (More Country) has admitted not understanding “the votes that embarrass” and Gabriel Rufián (ERC) has labeled the endorsement that the PSOE is going to give him as “cowardly”. “Stand a little,” he told them. Rufián does not believe that the Government is going to swallow “a toad”: Arnaldo’s is “a crocodile”, he assured.