Voting amidst a pandemic
BarcelonaIn the end there was no surprise and the news has been confirmed: Catalonia's High Court, in an unusual decision whose legal arguments we will know on Monday, declared the Government's postponement of the elections void and forces a vote on February 14. The decision was already advanced in an order that imposed precautionary measures, and in which four of the five judges stressed that there was an "intense public interest" in holding the elections not to extend provisionality. It will be interesting to see if on Monday they develop this argument, which was widely criticised, or if they tiptoe over it.
Because here the core of the question is whether, in an exceptional context such as the pandemic, a government that has not exhausted its term, and with the consensus of the majority of parties, can decide, based on reports from the health authorities, to postpone the elections for a few months so as not to put citizens at risk. Moreover, this is not an exceptional measure. It was applied by the governments of the Basque Country and Galicia last year; we have just seen how the French regional elections have been postponed until June, and the same is happening in Thuringia, in Germany. And last Sunday's presidential elections in Portugal broke the record for abstention: only four out of every 10 voters cast their ballots. Therefore, the context and the precedents reinforce the arguments of the Catalan Government in favour of the postponement.
The High Court's ruling, moreover, distorts the responsibility of the administrations. Until now, citizens have judged public officials by their management of the pandemic. But what happens when a certain decision is taken by the justice system, and who can citizens hold responsible? It is clear that the courts have to watch over fundamental rights, but applying common sense and respecting everybody's roles.
In any case, there is no point in complaining now, because the elections will be held on 14 February. All that is needed now is for the government to do everything it can to make the elections as safe as possible and for the parties to run a campaign that is sufficiently attractive for citizens to feel engaged and go to the polls. The fact that the campaign is online, without large mass events, should play in favour of the depth of the exchange of ideas. The citizens have the right, especially in the context of a pandemic, to know exactly what each party's political proposal is, both to resolve the conflict between Catalonia and Spain and to rebuild the economy and overcome the current crisis.
It would also be important that the judiciary does not interfere in the penitentiary policy of the Generalitat and respects political prisoners' transfer to open prisons. If their imprisonment is already an injustice, it is even more so to prevent them from having the same treatment as the rest of the prisoners and, in this case, to participate in the electoral campaign on equal terms. The opposite would be to confirm that after applying the enemy's criminal law, the enemy's penitentiary law is applied.
