Elections on Feb. 14, May 30 or whenever High Court says: Government working on all three scenarios
The executive submits plea to High Court to defend its competence
BarcelonaThe Government has presented this Thursday at nine o'clock in the morning - the deadline was ten o'clock - the allegations before the Catalonia's High Court to defend the suspension of the elections of February 14 and to move them to May 30. According to government sources, this is a document of around 50 pages. The reports by the Health Department, the Legal Services and Electoral Processes committee that have advised the decision to postpone the elections are attached.
Behind the scenes, uncertainty in the cabinet is absolute, despite the fact that they are confident that the court will finally endorse the postponement of the elections due to the forecasts on the pandemic - according to Health experts, the peak of admissions to ICUs is expected a few days before the vote. "When you enter a court you never know how it will end," vice president Pere Aragonès admitted yesterday in an interview with RAC1, while others did not dare to make predictions.
The scenarios are open and the Government foresees at least three: that the elections will be on February 14th as planned; that the High Court accepts the postponement May 30th; or even that the court endorses the postponement of the elections but forces the executive to reconsider the date. In view of these scenarios, the sources state that the court could also force the Generalitat to call elections 54 days after receiving the judges' response to the challenges. Even so, it is unlikely that the court will set the date.
In fact, Vice President Aragonès himself admitted to RAC1 that the elections could end up being between February and May. In any case, later in Parliament he committed himself before the groups to "fight until the end to defend the [postponement to] 30 May". he said the Court's decision had produced "concern, perplexity and indignation". According to Aragonès, elections cannot be held because of the effect they may have on the pandemic - he believes it is not advisable to call more than five million people to the polls in the midst of the third wave - and because of the "risk of a very large increase in abstention" due to fear of contagion.
Government sources explain that the administration is defending its competence to postpone the elections -as was done in the Basque Country and Galicia- and to relay both the reports by the Health Department and the Electoral Processes committee that support the decision to postpone 14-F once the insufficiency of the measures taken to guarantee the right to vote in an epidemiological situation like the current one has been established.
Public Prosecutor's Office support
The Public Prosecutor's Office showed its support to the precautionary measures. In a letter to the High Court, it argued that unless the postponement was preventively suspended, by the time the court ruled it would be too close to or even after the date of the elections, which would make it impossible to enforce the sentence if it were contrary to the postponement. It would "irremediably consolidate the possible infringement of the legal system and the violation of the rights invoked by the appellants".
What government sources do say is that what the court says in the precautionary measures may end up deciding when the elections will be held in Catalonia.
