This Saturday, October 22, is the one year of the empty seat in Congress previously held by Alberto Rodríguezwho acceded to it in the last general elections on the list of United We Can (UP) for Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a formation that he left the day after his departure from the Chamber. It is a completely unprecedented situation since the president of the institution, Meritxell Batet withdrew the act of deputy after a sentence of the Supreme Court for a crime of assault on a policeman in December 2014, during a demonstration in La Laguna (Tenerife), which sentenced him to a prison sentence of 45 days in prison, interchangeable for a fine of 540 euros, and an additional penalty of disqualification from passive suffrage.
Since that date, the Central Electoral Board (JEC) has issued different requirements for the replacement of Rodríguez by some of the people who followed him on the Tenerife list of those elections, but none of them has agreed to replace him in a gesture of solidarity, backed by the leadership of Podemos in the Canary Islands, for considering unjust both the sentence of the Supreme Court and the withdrawal of parliamentary accreditation by Batet. The also former leader of the purple formation, after the Supreme Court rejected the review and annulment of the sentence, is currently waiting for the Constitutional Court to resolve the appeal that he presented at the time against the resolution that separated him from the seat .
Although before last summer sources from the judiciary took for imminent a ruling from the constitutional arbitration court proving him right and restoring him to the post, a possibility that the Prosecutor’s Office was actually betting on, marks the anniversary of Rodríguez’s departure from Congress without the mystery being cleared up. Some sources believe that the sentence will come out with certainty before the end of the year, but no one dares to speculate on the designs of a body currently undergoing its own renewal and a political war between parties. There is also no news about the claim of the UP parliamentary group to replace in the seat the one who was also Secretary of Organization of the purple formation for two years, and therefore keeping a seat empty that can be key in several fundamental votes in the remainder of the legislature, among them the one that will take place next Thursday on the return amendments to the draft general budget of the State for 2023, and those that on this same matter will take place at the end of November if the Chamber agrees to its processing next week.
In all this time, the ghost of Rodríguez has hovered over the hemicycle in some nervous votes for the coalition government of PSOE and UP, and inspiring the rebellious act of reparation of his companions on the electoral list, who have not dared to stain with a a presence that they would consider treacherous the temple in which they have turned that parliamentary seat. First it was the number two on the list for Santa Cruz Tenerife in the last elections, Fátima González, who resigned to take the act, passing the turn to the third member of the candidacy, Patricia Mesa, who has not even bothered to respond to the communication from the JEC. A situation that has no legal precedent given that the regulations and the electoral body do not set a time period to communicate the acceptance or resignation of the seat, thus prolonging that the seat remains empty due to the absence of a response to that requirement.
That of Alberto Rodríguez has become a case on which many and varied legal and political controversies have arisen due to the unprecedented way in which he had to leave Congress, which has an even more complex judicial derivative in the resolution that in this regard has to issue the TC, and by the parliamentary situation caused by the fact that none of the people who could replace him are willing to occupy the seat. The initial sentence of the Supreme Court caused an institutional confrontation between this jurisdictional body and the legislative chamber itself which ended, however, with a controversial decision by its president since neither the sentence, nor the clarification on its execution, nor the reports of the lawyers of the Chamber, were pronounced clearly at any time that the conviction automatically entailed the withdrawal of the parliamentary act to the then deputy, as Batet ended up doing.
CT slope
In the political and parliamentary sphere, Rodríguez’s departure from Congress initially led to his abandonment, with much criticism, of Podemos, which has even intensified over time, and a confrontation of this formation with the president of the Chamber, from whom they came to ask for her resignation and even threatening to sue her for prevarication. This confrontation has fallen asleep in recent months both due to the estrangement between Rodríguez and the Podemos leadership, and due to the ‘impasse’ that has been opened by the Tenerife court battle to regain the seat. If the TC were to agree with him and consider the withdrawal of the seat unconstitutional in the way that Batet did, as some sources pointed out a few months ago, his position would be called into question and there is no doubt that Podemos could return to the charge demanding his resignation. A very compromised situation for the PSOE and for the central government itself in the final stretch of the legislature.
In the other parliamentary sphere, that of the arithmetic of the votes with a government majority of only 155 seats, a year of empty seats has caused quite a few scares to the Coalition Executive due to the haste of many votes, and in some cases saving important laws by the minimum, or even by the error of some opposition deputy, as happened with the labor reform, which was approved by the involuntary affirmative vote of the PP deputy Alberto Casero. The repeated refusal to replace Rodríguez by the people who followed him on the electoral list maintains this situation and the purple formation assumes that this seat is lost for parliamentary purposes during the rest of the legislature. This situation has been complemented in its most grotesque aspect by the fact that the other Canarian seat of Podemos, that of Meri Pita, from Gran Canaria, also left the purple bench when she left the match and moved to the Mixed Groupalthough for the moment without voting differently from that of his former colleagues.
The other political variable of the anniversary of the ‘ghost seat’ in Congress is the one that has to do with the uncertainty that exists in the alternative left-wing space to the PSOE a few months before the regional and local elections, and little more than a theoretical year of the generals. Alberto Rodríguez announced in his day the creation of a political project of “popular character” and of “Canarian obedience” on which there is still no concretewhile there is speculation about the possibility that both he and the sectors that support him in the Canary Islands end up converging on Add, the project championed by the current second vice president of the Government and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz. Another possibility is that of some type of society with the formation created in the Islands of former militants of Podemos and that with the brand gather the former deputy Carmen Valido presides.
