Automatically translated from Basque, translation may contain errors. More information here. Elhuyarren itzultzaile automatikoaren logoa

"When constitutional reform is not possible, the consequence is an authoritarian system"

  • Parliament, Constitutional, separation of powers (Parliament, Constitutional Court, separation of powers), is the last book by the professor of administrative law of the UPV/EHU, Iñaki Lasagabaster. It has been published by the Basque Institute of Public Administration. He also added a small note to the title: Making an essential reference to Catalonia.

15 January 2021 - 13:01
Argazkia: Iñigo Azkona

The book analyzes in a theoretical and practical way the separation of powers, especially the relationship between Parliament and the judiciary, and more specifically, Parliament and the relationship of constitutional courts. How were the relations between these organizations articulated? What has been done and what has not? Basically, Lasagabaster argues that the Basque Parliament should be inviolable before the Constitutional Court and, in general, with exceptions, so would parliamentarians.

In his view, this does not happen and more and more, in the Spanish State the Constitutional Court has more and more power to participate and send in the day-to-day of parliament and, if necessary, to punish non-compliance with its mandates. It analyses in particular the case of the last few years in Catalonia, which has culminated in the imprisonment of its parliamentarians, members of the government and leaders of civil society.

The professor has dealt in detail with the case of successive prohibitions issued by the Constitutional Court to the Bureau of the Catalan Parliament and concluded that: “There you see clearly how the administration of judges is given in a democracy, it would be difficult to find a more appropriate example. It is the judges who decide what is debatable in Parliament. The Constitutional Court has a monopoly on rejecting unconstitutional laws, but its action is far from that theory.”

 

 

The political impetus of the judges in Spain has spread a great deal in recent years, it is not just a question that a Basque professor says. Although the final conclusions are not the same, some passages in the book have led me to a conference that was pronounced by journalist Enric Juliana after the referendum in Catalonia in Pamplona. Juliana said that in the case of Catalonia not only has the Government of Rajoy responded, but that the legal structure has entered fully, and not, as it is often said, by the impetus of the Government, but on its own initiative: “Judges play in the spirit that today lives in Madrid. Justice is a world in itself, a part of the depths of the State, and a new doctrine is now being consolidated. In the end, a paradox is going to happen, that politics is going to be done by the Constitutional Court and not by Parliament, which it really has to do. It was curious, the Parliament of Spain has done little in the whole matter.”

As for the inviolability of parliaments, Lasagabaster says that the Constitutional Court does not act in the same way with the main political forces of the State or, for example, with nationalists. The book analyzes the Catalan question and the Atutxa cases of the Basque Parliament in 2005, but also the discrepancies of the Constitutional with the parliaments of Asturias or Extremadura.

The book details that the constitutional courts do not behave in this way with parliaments in the rights of a profound democratic tradition in Europe and sets the example of the United Kingdom: In the face of a similar problem in Scotland and Catalonia, a referendum is ended in Scotland and those who have asked for a referendum are imprisoned in Catalonia.

The conclusion of the book is hard: The democratic health of the Spanish State is very poor. In his view, "the constitutional system should not prevent any parliamentary debate, there is no rule that would allow it, and if there were any, the political system would not have a democratic character (…)". When constitutional reform or ritual law reform is not possible, the conclusion is an authoritarian system in which the democratic principle has a secondary meaning. We live in that moment.”


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