The Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, on January 12 in Mérida. Jero Morales (EFE)
The conservative Association of Prosecutors (AF), the majority in the running, on Wednesday called for the resignation of Álvaro García Ortiz, Attorney General, after a week of intense confrontation. The group accuses the head of the Public Ministry of spreading “manipulated information” through “institutional channels” in order to “discredit” Consuelo Madrigal, a member of this association and former Attorney General at the suggestion of a PP government. An accusation that was rejected by the Attorney General’s Office (FGE). This motion comes as the AF, in constant conflict with García Ortiz, accuses him of “grossly” “maneuvering” to appoint his predecessor, Dolores Delgado, as Democratic Memory Room prosecutor.
“The deterioration of the institutional prestige of the prosecutor’s office has reached one of its highest limits, if at all possible,” the prosecutors’ association said in a statement released on Wednesday. This note adds the following:[Todo ello]using the means of communication of the FGE (Infofiscalía, [un boletín interno de difusión entre los miembros de la carrera]) to answer a specific question, in a sort of personal reckoning, without the minimum accuracy of someone who should be a renowned jurist.” García Ortiz and Delgado belong to the Progressive Union of Prosecutors (UPF) and were appointed by PSOE executives.
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This new conflict arises because García Ortiz is bringing forward the meeting of the Finance Council, scheduled for June 19, to June 8, where the candidatures for the position that Delgado aspires to will be analyzed. The appointment is made by the Attorney General, but the members of this body can express their opinion (they even vote, but the result is not binding). However, members of the AF defend that this appointment should be suspended ahead of the call for elections announced by President Pedro Sánchez last week: “None of the previous Attorneys General made appointments to discretionary positions after the dissolution of Parliament.” Those that were outstanding became deferred,” the letter said.
However, the current leadership of the Attorney General’s Office is of the opinion that “there are no grounds to justify the suspension” of the Fiscal Council and that the process must remain necessary to fill the vacancies advertised before elections were called. Furthermore, in the May 31 Infofiscalía bulletin, the department headed by García Ortiz replied that this position “does not constitute a new decision but rather maintains the historical criteria” of the FGE; In addition to making sure there were precedents. As an example, he cited that Consuelo Madrigal, member of the AF and Attorney General of a PP government, proposed Olayo Eduardo González as Prosecutor Emeritus to the Supreme Court – who was appointed on May 27, 2016 – “after the general elections were held”. on December 20, 2015 a failed investiture and [la convocatoria] of the new elections on June 26, 2016”.
This tip triggered enormous uneasiness in the Association of Public Prosecutors. Madrigal sent a letter to the Attorney General’s Office, to which EL PAÍS had access, reiterating that González’s appointment was not “discretionary” (nor was it a “promotion”), but rather was due to a “quasi-automated process.” age reasons; For this reason, it demanded that it be “corrected” publicly by “the same means” and to the same “extent”, since the public was “led into a serious error by equating heterogeneous and radically opposed situations”. Then, on June 6, the FGE issued a new Infofiscalía, in which, far from taking a step back, it “supplemented” its previous bulletin with “further additional nominations proposed by the former Attorney General, which could not be paralyzed by the call for general elections. According to the document, there were a total of 11 “voluntary” names for madrigals.
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