We must have faith in justice. This is what is usually said when there is a resolution that arouses surprise or that openly conflicts with the logic of a well-applied law. But for some time a part of the Spanish justice system has been gaining distrust and it is becoming increasingly difficult to pronounce that phrase. The Supreme Court ruling condemning the State Attorney General marks a point of no return.
After an oral trial examined under a magnifying glass in which the most eminent jurists saw no evidence to support the accusation, the conviction is announced when the sentence has not even been written. Everything suggests that we will see, as already happened with the application of the amnesty law, a new distortion of the law to justify a sentence that will not even have a higher court to appeal to. The way it was celebrated by Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the PP shows that the complaint was not raised as a question of justice, but as a legal tool to attack the Government.
We recall that the origin of this lawsuit is a ploy devised by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff, to neutralize the expected political effect when it became known that the president’s boyfriend had committed a double taxation crime and had proposed an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office to avoid prison. Miguel Ángel Rodríguez launched a false version to present the prosecutor’s accusation as a government maneuver against the president and for this he had the usual collaborations with the press. The prosecution responded to the hoax by explaining the truth. In the end the prosecutor is convicted and the criminals and confessed liars toast with champagne. Now we see the benefits of the PP’s persistent resistance to the renewal of the General Council of the Judiciary. As they argued and resisted, they appointed relative magistrates to jurisdictional positions.
In cases like this, a dilemma arises that progressive forces handle very poorly: how far it is legal to go in the defense strategy. What to do when the opponent deliberately breaks the rules of the game? How to react to legal maneuvers aimed at obtaining a certain political effect, without damaging the institutions? For the left, the defense of institutions is very important. Justice and laws are tools for protecting the weak and he knows that when they are used for political battle they lose legitimacy. But not denouncing these maneuvers and not submitting to their consequences for the sake of judicial or institutional respect implies accepting defeat in advance. Those who break the rules count on this.
In this case, they hoped to convince the attorney general to resign just as he was being indicted. This did not happen. And now? Miguel Ángel Rodríguez and Isabel Díaz Ayuso managed to overturn the case and impose their distorted story. It’s scary to think what they might come up with if they reached Moncloa. One of the strategies followed by the new far right is to conquer power to empty, from within, the institutions of democracy of their content and use them as it sees fit. Exercising arbitrary power while maintaining the appearance of democracy.
