CUP will request delegate vote for Pau Juvillà in spite of Electoral Board resolution

BarcelonaThe Parliament will open a new front in the controversy over the Juvillà case. This Thursday the Bureau will have to decide on CUP MP Pau Juvillà's requesto to delegate his vote. Parliamentary sources confirm to ARA that the CUP will make the request for the plenary that is expected this Thursday but also for next week. And, if nothing changes, the pro-independence majority will accept it. However, neither JxCat nor ERC nor the CUP can guarantee that Juvillà's vote will be counted. In fact, sources point in the opposite direction and even claim that Parliament's lawyers were already made uncomfortable by the CUP's request.

The results will not be observed today, since Juvillà will not vote due to a conflict of interests – the House will be examinin the Statute of Deputies' text on his case. Therefore, it won't be until next week's plenary session that we will see whether Juvillà maintains his right to vote as an MP. The Central Electoral Board (JEC) has given Speaker Laura Borràs until Friday to explain how she has executed the Board's resolution, which calls for Juvillà to be stripped of his seat. At 13.30 there is an urgent meeting of the Board of Spokespersons and a plenary session will be convened at 5 pm with a single point on the agenda: to ratify the text on Juvillà.

In this ruling, the pro-independence majority of the Parliament already accepts that it will not be able to wait until the sentence is final – the only case provided in the regulations for an MP to be stripped of his seat in case of conviction – but the parties aspired at least that Juvillà would not lose his seat until the Supreme Court had ruled on the precautionary measures that both Parliament and the MP had requested. However, they also explained that there would be no disobedience in order not to compromise the officials of the chamber, responsible for ensuring the payment of payroll and certify the counting of votes. In fact, this Wednesday, the president of the commission of the Statute of the Deputy, Jaume-Alonso Cuevillas, acknowledged that "they cannot guarantee the effectiveness of all the acts involved in the exercise" of deputy.

Juvillà has made public that he suffers from cancer and announced that he is leaving his place at the Parliamentary Bureau. However, he has also requested that his rights as a deputy be respected and that his seat be defended. CUP sources claim that neither is being fulfilled by the Speakership. In a note sent to their militants, CUP explains that they even offered to take over the Speakership to assume the responsibility of disobedience to the JEC, but that neither JxCat nor ERC were in favour.

This Thursday Speaker Laura Borràs, has sent a letter to several international parliaments to expose the situation, with the external "interferences" that demand that he ceases to be a deputy, despite the fact that the chamber's rules protect Juvillà. In the letter Borràs admits that the JEC has already "dispossessed" Juvillà of his seat and she denounces "defencelessness".