The internal pressure in the PP broke the judicial pact

[- !el Catire *O*]

 

The inopportune messages with the political interference on Justice sent from the mobile of Ignacio Cosidó, the spokesman of the PP in the Senate, were a fuze. And for many in the PP the perfect justification to break the judicial pact, the only great agreement reached in this legislature between the Socialist Government and the new PP of Pablo Casado. The PP officially claims that it dissociated itself from the pact for the "disloyalty" of the Sánchez Executive by filtering the name of Manuel Marchena, the conservative candidate for president of the General Council of the Judiciary. Po[CENSORED]r sources involved in the negotiation deny that version and conclude that the trigger was the internal pressure of the hardest line in the party and in its media support.

The intrahistory of how the pact was first forged and how it was destroyed begins with the only meeting held by Pedro Sánchez and Casado in La Moncloa on August 2. The two leaders agreed that it should be renewed in time and form the highest body of the judiciary and that they should put someone they trust in their work. That's how it went.

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The next day Sanchez entrusted this task to his Justice Minister, Dolores Delgado, and Casado to Rafael Catalá, the former minister of that area in the last team of Mariano Rajoy. The two made a first call in the summer and postponed their first appointment, in the Ministry, for the first days of September. Since then these meetings were almost weekly, with discretion, and without excessive problems, creating even a climate of some confidence between both, as confirmed in the environment of the two teams.

The first task they set was to confirm that they really wanted to reach a bilateral agreement, without including either Podemos or Ciudadanos in the negotiations, and the second thing they did was to begin to purge the list of more than fifty candidates who presented to occupy the 20 coveted posts of members of the Judiciary. So they arrived until mid-October, with the commitment not to veto. And it was then Catalá who demanded that Delgado talk about the aspiring president and put the name of Marchena on the table. It was not a casual or innocent proposal.
 

Marchena had already been proposed for that position in December 2013 by the then po[CENSORED]r minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón to his interlocutor, Antonio Camacho, with whom he negotiated with the same system the previous renewal of the Council by respective delegation of Rajoy and Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba . Marchena was then in the Supreme Court and then fell off the list in the final stretch as now. His theoretical conservative attachment seemed a minor evil compared to his proven independence and professional level demonstrated in the prosecution of the independence leaders in Catalonia.

Delgado did not cause that name but to recover a progressive majority in the Council. Catalá convinced Casado that his friend Marchena was unbeatable and above all that the cast (11 progressive members and 9 conservatives plus the president) was the best and only possible. Delgado and Catalá agreed that the renovation would in turn facilitate a chain of more than 30 appointments at other judicial levels. At the end of October, the matter was almost resolved pending public disclosure. Sánchez and Casado received permanent information. This was the second decisive weekend of November. The newspaper Abc published that Friday 9 an information with all the conservative aspirants proposed by the PP, without citing the president. </ CF> EL PAÍS advanced that afternoon on its website the candidacy of Marchena, as confirmed by sources involved in the negotiation and outside the PSOE and the Government. That news bothered the PP and La Moncloa. Some media denied it. That weekend they met again Delgado and Catalá: the pact went ahead despite these inconveniences.

On the night of Sunday, November 11, the minister summoned Marchena to his office at 8.30 am to confirm in 15 minutes that she was his candidate for president. That Monday, after seeing Delgado and advance to the director of a means his plans for the future Council, Marchena verified how from the Moncloa his appointment was confirmed, <TB> that shortly after they also ratified sources of the PP. He did not put a stick.

"Huge discomfort"
The problem with Marchena was unleashed by the angry reaction of the toughest sector of the PP and the conservative media, not with the president but with the aspiring progressive vocalist José Ricardo de Prada, one of the magistrates of the National Court who participated in the drafting of the Gürtel ruling, as now po[CENSORED]r leaders involved in the negotiation and the management confess. In an internal meeting of the parliamentary group one of the members of his address came to reproach Casado and his environment that "excessive flexibility" and did not understand "the enormous discomfort of the party's base about to explode" for having accepted De Prada.

That reaction and the harsh criticism in newspapers and radios related to the PP multiplied in the following days to the point that the party leadership then chose to allow Carlos Rojas, his parliamentary spokesman in the appointments committee, to question his face De Prada's lack of independence and he said that he could be better in the Council than by signing sentences. Of course, the PP swallowed the toad vote in favor. It was a reaction agreed to calm inner spirits very excited. But it was not enough.

Then came, on Monday 19, the publication in El Español of Cosidó whatsapp. On Tuesday 20, Marchena resigned. And then the voting in the Congress of the members is suspended. In the PP a witch hunt has been opened to find out who wrote the message that allowed Casado to get out of a pact to which he does not see enough benefits.