'Cleanliness law': astonishment and trembling

Some cynic might come to believe that the magistrates of the Constitutional Court were left exhausted after clashing with those of the Supreme Court over the amnesty law, and they no longer had the strength to contradict them in a new outrage, as serious or even more serious democratically than the previous one. This concerns the precautionary measures imposed by the Supreme Court against the eighth additional provision of the Democratic Memory Law, which in practice leave the 163,020 people naturalized under this measure without the right to vote. The Constitutional Court (by a large majority, but with two dissenting opinions) has dismissed—as “premature”—the claim of the Ombudsman, who had filed an appeal to set aside the Supreme Court's decision, given that the period for allegations that the Supreme Court left open for this case is still ongoing. Some cynic, as we were saying, might come to believe that the Constitutional Court magistrates preferred to hide behind a technicality rather than aggravate the confrontation they are already maintaining with those of the Supreme Court (a confrontation that is also a terrible symptom, in this case of the politicization of justice and its reverse, which is the judicialization of politics).

It is extremely disturbing that the highest court of the judiciary annuls the right to vote of a group of citizens who are full citizens, and that it does so at the request of the far-right party Vox and an allied entity called Iustitia Europa (it belongs to the type of “civic” entities that the far-right establishes to be able to receive public money or to be able to file lawsuits, or both at the same time). It is even more alarming because, let us remember, those naturalized by the so-called “grandchildren law” —a mistaken denomination, we have already said that it is an additional provision of the historical memory law— had already voted in previous elections. Specifically, in those of 2023 (municipal, regional, and general) and in those of 2024 (European). Is the Supreme Court telling us now that the votes cast by these citizens in these elections were not valid? And that therefore the results were not either? The Supreme Court's arguments to justify its decision do not hide much: they speak of the suspicion that the vote of those naturalized by the democratic memory law could prevent “the desired result.” One does not need to be very perceptive to guess what the result is that these magistrates “desire”.

Beyond partial justice, the fact sets a very serious precedent. Which other groups could have their right to vote questioned, or directly denied, in the future? With what arguments, pulled from where? The constriction—the destruction, in practice—of universal suffrage, an essential and defining right of modern democracy, is a goal of the so-called new rights, actually so old that they would like to return to the times of census suffrage, in which only those who meet certain economic, social, wealth, or gender requirements can vote (and are only citizens with full rights). This is also what we are at risk of losing.