The mayor values its “independent and apolitical” character and sees it as “the most appropriate path” in the current environment of “polarization”
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, December 18 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The mayor of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, José Manuel Bermúdez, announced this Monday that he will address the Ombudsman to request that he file an appeal for unconstitutionality if the amnesty law is approved.
This decision, which is in line with a motion approved by the corporation’s plenary session on September 29, is motivated by the report prepared by the City Council’s legal services, responding to an instruction from the mayor on November 15 in the which requested that all legal alternatives be explored to avoid parliamentary processing or, where appropriate, the application of that law.
The council states in a note that the report determines that, once the Organic Law Proposal has entered Congress, “the City Council, by itself, is not entitled to intervene in its processing”, but, equally, it exposes the possibility to file an appeal for unconstitutionality, once the Law is approved.
Given that the unconstitutionality appeal can be filed by the President of the Government, by fifty deputies, fifty senators or by the Ombudsman, Bermúdez considers that “in a climate of polarization, exacerbated by this law, where politics is contaminating social life and the judges are being questioned, the most appropriate way is to go to this body to present this appeal before the Constitutional Court”.
The councilor argues this decision alluding to the “independent and apolitical” nature of this figure, as stated in Organic Law 3/1981, of April 6, and recalls that the Ombudsman “is owed to all Spaniards”, therefore which considers that “at this moment, it is the only body that can act as a defender of citizens.”
The request will be based on the fact that the norm violates the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and, among others, the basic principles of legal security, the equality of all Spaniards before the law and judicial independence, “so that a law, which, “On principle, it must be general, it is being used as a political instrument for the privilege of a few.”
In the same way, it will be based on the conclusion of the report of the municipal legal services, on the doubts of a large part of magistrates, notaries, judges, lawyers, professional associations, social and economic groups about the constitutional fit of this norm and on the fact that “the President of the Government himself and several of the ministers and senior socialist officials reiterated the unconstitutionality of this law before forming the Government.”
“We are going to do what we said we would do; that is, use all the means at our disposal to oppose this Organic Law, acting, as is our duty, in defense of the common good, of the Constitution to which we swore and the principles democratic,” concludes Bermúdez.
