Salamanca.- The head of the Court of First Instance 5 of Salamanca has ugly this Friday to the PP that, despite being summoned personally, the national president of the party, Alberto Núñez Feijoo, has not appeared to testify this Friday on the demand of a group affiliates who ask that the congress of the PP of Salamanca be called after almost two years of delay.
In a hearing to determine whether the PP should be imposed, as a precautionary measure, the call of the provincial congress before the municipal elections, the judge has insisted, on two occasions, to the legal representation of the party, that the PP and Núñez Feijoo have decided “unilaterally that it is not pertinent that he went to this Court”, despite the fact that “he was the one who was summoned.”
At the time of the court hearing, Feijoó was visiting the International Tourism Fair (Fitur) in Madrid, where he met the president of the Junta and the PP of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, among other leaders. of his party.
While the PP lawyer has assured that he was acting “in good faith” based on a criterion of “usefulness” of the statement, the plaintiff lawyer has asked that Feijoó “be considered confessed regarding the question that was going to be asked that he have it as true” and that “appropriate sanctions” be imposed on him, a question that was going to be: “if as a member of the executive committee of the PP, which has been since 2005, he has participated in the adoption of any agreement by which the call is delayed of the provincial congress of Salamanca».
The demand of these affiliates, the majority mayors and councilors of the PP in several municipalities of the province of Salamanca and some of them provincial deputy, denounce the alleged violation of the rights of political participation and passive suffrage.
Despite the fact that the judge personally summoned Feijoó for this hearing, two lawyers from the legal services of the PP have appeared there with the argument that Feijóo “was not president at the time the events analyzed and referred to a provincial Congress occurred. of the year 2017»; while the prosecutor, in addition, has justified the absence of Feijoo in legal terms and by the way of drafting the “certificate of summons”.
In these terms, the judge has assured that “if Mr. Feijoó has not appeared this morning, it is because he did not deem it appropriate, because he was the one who was summoned, not the man who is in front of me, it is the PP who that he understands that he does not have to attend to the summons of this court.
«It is the PP that decides that it has nothing to contribute. So, the person who was summoned, Mr. Feijoó, who would have come and told me I don’t know anything about this matter, I can’t inform you of anything, “added the judge.
Precautionary measures
At this hearing, an attempt was made to determine whether the imposition of precautionary measures was necessary, as requested by the plaintiffs, and which consisted of the urgent convening, in 45 days, of a provincial congress of the PP.
The lawyer for the members of the PP has insisted on the “pertinence” of these measures, in addition to recalling that on the one hand there is the request for precautionary measures and, on the other, the request that the Court recognize “that it has violated a basic right.”
Meanwhile, from the PP it is considered that this measure “does not take place” because, in the opinion of the lawyers, “it is intended that 13 militants replace the will of the provincial executive of the party” and, in addition, it would cause “serious qualitative and quantitative implications » at a time as important as the present, «with the upcoming municipal elections».
This refusal has been supported by the chief prosecutor of Salamanca, who has acted in the court hearing, because “it cannot be that the precautionary measure is the same as the merits of the claim”, in addition to the fact that “with these measures it is not possible to make an anticipation of the court ruling”, and he told the judge: “imagine what would happen if you uphold the injunctions and then dismiss the claim”.
The pandemic as an alibi
Although the judicial hearing did not try to elucidate the merits of the matter, that is, the alleged violation of the rights of political participation of 13 members of the PP of Salamanca, the defendant lawyers wanted to delve into the reasons why the provincial congress of Salamanca It would not have been called in 2021, which was when it was called for by the party statutes, and has argued that the pandemic “made meetings with large numbers of people impossible.”
Faced with this statement, the representative of the plaintiffs has stressed that “Salamanca was not the nucleus of the covid in the world, but Wuhan”, to which he added that, in fact, the pandemic did not prevent them from being held in this same period in question the provincial congresses of the rest of the provinces of Castilla y León and also the Autonomous Congress of the PP, on January 15, 2022.
The lawyer for the affiliates has maintained that “the provincial congress of the PP in Salamanca has been delayed because the PP of Genoa is not interested in holding the provincial congress in Salamanca” and has snapped at the party lawyers that it seems that “they are trying to affiliates only contribute by paying dues and when it comes to participating, what the national leadership of the party says is done». EFE
