Madrid (EFE) Vicente Guilarte, who corresponds to replace him for being the oldest member, will assume the presidency.
Rafael Mozo became substitute president of the CPGJ after the resignation in October last year of his predecessor, Carlos Lesmes, due to the lack of a political agreement to renew the body, and this Wednesday, when he turns 72, he leaves a body that has already over 4 and a half years in office, with the unknown who will be his replacement.
In the ordinary plenary session scheduled for this morning, the CGPJ will address at the request of six members – three conservatives and three progressives – the conditions for the presidency of the body, that is, whether it should be required that whoever holds the position have exclusive dedication.
All eyes are on Vicente Guilarte
Because, according to the norms established by this Council when Mozo took office, the substitute president is the oldest member and that directs his gaze to the conservative Vicente Guilarte, who at the moment does not have exclusive dedication and has made his position compatible with that of lawyer and university professor.
In their writing, the progressive members Álvaro Cuesta, Pilar Sepúlveda and Clara Martínez; and the conservatives Juan Manuel Fernández, Juan Martínez Moya and Nuría Díaz ask to address “the compromised question” of whether “this compatibility regime” that Guilarte has enjoyed up to now “can continue to hold the presidency by substitution.”
The six consider that, if he agrees to become the new president of the CGPJ, he should “resign” from his job as a lawyer and move to the administrative situation of special services in his university profession.
A debate that will be hosted by the governing body of the judges four days before the general elections on July 23 and with a CGPJ that, with the departure of Mozo, only has 16 of the 21 members provided for in the law: 10 conservatives and 6 progressives.
He has been in office for more than four and a half years -since December 2018- and, therefore, he cannot make appointments after a legal reform promoted by the PSOE and United We Can, which the PP wants to repeal if it reaches Moncloa.
The situation has left the judicial leadership, so far, with 84 vacancies: 22 in the Supreme Court, 1 in the National Court, 36 in Superior Courts of Justice and 25 in Provincial Courts.