The Attorney General of the State, Álvaro García Ortiz, had so far remained silent about the report of the General Council of Justice (CGPJ), which on November 30, for the first time in a democracy, refused to approve the name he proposed. The government decided to name the head of the State Ministry because he was considered “unsuitable”. García Ortiz had not previously spoken, but this Thursday he took advantage of his appearance before the Judicial Commission of Congress to denounce in very strong terms the eight members (all proposed by the PP) who had signed this statement. The Attorney General accused them of behaving like “a court of honor” despite five years in office, of signing a text without a “minimum level of rigor” and of taking a “totally illegal” position. “Neither the judges nor you Governing body elects prosecutors in Spain “This is not our legal or constitutional model,” warned García Ortiz, who also criticized the Supreme Court ruling annulling the promotion of his predecessor Dolores Delgado.
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The attorney general has become one of the most popular recipients of criticism from the opposition, which sees him as an extension of Delgado's mandate and accuses him of favoring the discretionary appointment of prosecutors who are members of the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF). ), to which García Ortiz belonged before taking office. The recent Supreme Court ruling (which annulled Delgado's promotion on the grounds that the Attorney General had acted with a “diversion of power”) and his refusal to rule on the future amnesty law have put him at the center of the political debate. This Thursday's appearance, mandatory before the inauguration of the prosecutor, was predestined to address this situation and that is exactly what happened.
In his first intervention, García Ortiz responded to some of the criticism received in recent months and even to the Supreme Court ruling, which made “a series of statements” to which he could not comment. “I was neither a party, neither as a defendant nor as a participant, nor was I heard in the proceedings. “Some strict terms that appreciate subjective circumstances in which my opinion has not been heard and against whose conclusions I cannot appeal (…), although the content of the judgment could be interpreted in different ways,” warned the prosecutor who delivered the verdict Delgados has defended that the appointment was made “strictly on the principles of merit and ability”. “I also unequivocally represent the following consideration: only the assignment of the first category to the outgoing Attorney General guarantees the absolute independence of the judgment during his term in office,” added García Ortiz, who recalled that this was the reason that led to the to propose former Attorneys General Juan Ortiz Úrculo and María José Segarra for promotion to the first category.
However, the prosecutor's reaction was sharpest to the eight conservative members of the CGPJ, who considered him unsuitable for the office. “This reduced majority seems to have given itself the task of monitoring the actions of the Attorney General from the outset, as if it were a hierarchical body,” said the Prosecutor, who regretted that the Council had decided this way without his consent give audience. “It was once again a court of honor, to which I was subjected by eight members, without prior acts, without accusations and without severity, since they were based on sources still unknown to me.”
According to García Ortiz, some of the statements contained in this report are “inappropriate for lawyers of recognized reputation.” Predictably, this report was one of the weapons used by Vox and PP to protest against the appointment of García Ortiz. Popular speaker Fernando de Rosa accused him of “bleeding from the wound.” “I do not believe that an attack on the Supreme Court and the General Council of the Judiciary is the best recommendation.”
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During his appearance, García Ortiz outlined some of the challenges of his new mandate. One of the goals of the new criminal procedure law is to put the public prosecutor's office in charge of criminal investigations, “an open question for the country's judicial modernization.” However, it does not appear that this regulation, which was already stuck in the last legislative period, is one of the government's priorities. This Thursday, before the same Justice Commission, Minister Félix Bolaños did not rule out this, but warned that it must be done “by consensus”, a requirement that is currently difficult to meet.
García Ortiz has also pointed to the possibility of appointing judges to the congressional investigative commissions agreed between the PSOE and the Independentists. And it has done this by agreeing to the government's thesis, to which the CGPJ unanimously agreed this Thursday: “The commissions of inquiry do not have the task of reviewing the decisions of the courts. The legal system prohibits it.”
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