Vox's initiative that Sánchez has left on hold and that could lead him to prison

@ElentirENG ES 5·30·2023 · 7:10 0

The announcement of early call for general elections made yesterday by Pedro Sánchez will have a personal relief for him.

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the act of dissolving the Cortes to call general elections causes the parliamentary initiatives that were being transmitted in the current legislature to decline, with the sole exception of motions of censure that have already been presented. This means, for example, that the ALS Law, approved unanimously in Congress and blocked by the PSOE and Podemos -which have the majority in the Parliament Table- it will no longer be processed and will have to be presented again in the next legislature. The left hastened to approve more controversial laws and now leaves Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients in the lurch.

The reform of the Penal Code presented by Vox in November

For Sánchez, the decline of ongoing parliamentary initiatives will have a very beneficial effect on a personal level. As indicated by Europa Press, Congress was going to debate this week an initiative by Vox to modify the Penal Code. Vox's initiative was presented on November 29, after the PSOE announced its repeal of the crime of sedition and the reduction of penalties for embezzlement to benefit their separatist parliamentary partners and that they maintain their support for Sánchez, an unprecedented act of corruption in our democracy that leaves the rule of law defenseless against future separatist coups like the one in 2017, which motivated a lawsuit by Vox against Sánchez.

That Vox initiative that was going to be debated this week can be read here (see PDF, page 23). The text expressly mentioned the initiative of the PSOE to repeal sedition and reduce embezzlement. First of all, Vox proposed increasing the penalties for the crime of embezzlement, raising the prison sentence to a range of three to six years, and increasing the minimum penalty of absolute disqualification to a range of eight to twelve years. In addition, the Vox initiative increased the prison sentence to a range of four to eight years when the crime was committed, among other assumptions, allocating "funds or public resources to achieve purposes openly contrary to the unity of Spain or the constitutional order."

The initiative contemplated prison sentences for members of the government

Likewise, the Vox initiative proposed introducing a new chapter in the Penal Code entitled "Crimes against the unity of the Nation." The first article of this new chapter punished the "authority or official, belonging to any of the public administrations, constitutional or constitutionally relevant bodies or other public powers of Spain that, by action or omission, with abuse from their position or function, perform, collaborate, cooperate, favour, facilitate, drive or promote the performance of conduct or the approval of regulations with the purpose of attacking the unity or territorial integrity of Spain or facilitate the independence of a part of the Nation." The text punished this crime with a prison sentence of ten to twenty years.

Likewise, the article punished the "authority or official who, with abuse or abandonment of his function or position, supports or tolerates the acts described in the previous paragraph" with prison sentence of ten to fifteen years. The second point of the article contemplated imposing a higher degree penalty "when the conducts described in section 1 were carried out by the ministers of the Government of Spain, acting individually or as members of said collegiate body, without prejudice to the provisions of the following section, or by the president, vice-president(s) or members of regional government councils, acting individually or as members of said collegiate bodies."

The president of the government would have a higher penalty than the rest

Point 3 of the article added: "The penalty will be imposed two degrees higher when the conducts described in section 1 were carried out by the President of the Government of Spain." It was a clear allusion to Sánchez's cooperation with his separatist parliamentary partners to disarm the rule of law in the face of a new separatist coup, as the government finally did with the repeal of the crime of sedition.

The reform of the Penal Code proposed by Vox also increased prison sentences for the crime of sedition up to a range of ten to twelve years, and from "twelve to fifteen years, if they were constituted persons in authority." In addition, Vox's initiative included a single transitory provision that stated: "This organic law will be applied to crimes perfected after its entry into force, with regardless of whether part of the conduct defined in the criminal offense may have been initiated prior to this moment."

Sánchez avoids an uncomfortable debate that would have brought to light his pacts with the separatists

This initiative, if it had been approved -it is unlikely that the majority of the left would have accepted it-, could have put Sánchez in serious trouble, even going as far as to take him to prison for his desire to disarm the rule of law to favor his separatist partners and pave the way for a new coup against the unity of Spain. Sánchez has caused that initiative to decline just when it was about to be debated, a debate that could once again have exposed before public opinion his complicity with those who have the declared purpose of repeating the attack on national unity that they carried out out six years ago.

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Photo: PSOE.