The Supreme Court leaves Vox out of the electoral debates in Castilla y León
Vox will not be in the January and February debates of the elections in Castilla y León. The Supreme Court has rejected the precautionary request of the far-right party in which it demanded to be able to be in the debates on January 31 and February 9 and the judges recall that it does not meet the legal requirements as it does not have its own parliamentary group in the regional parliament . The decision, yes, forces the public media of Castilla y León to compensate for this lack of presence with other multilateral debates or to provide compensatory information about the Vox candidate.
The Central Electoral Board rejects Vox's request to attend debates in the Castilla y León campaign
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Santiago Abascal's party had taken to the Supreme Court the decision of the Central Electoral Board not to allow him to participate in those two debates, by not complying with what the law says. Electoral Law of Castilla y León in its article 31b: "The candidates for the presidency of the Junta de Castilla y León of the political formations that have their own parliamentary group in the Cortes de Castilla y León must hold at least two public debates during the electoral campaign", explains the rule. Vox does not have, today, that own group.
The third chamber of the Supreme has studied the allegations of both Vox and the Prosecutor's Office and the Electoral Board, presented in the last hours, and has chosen to reject the precautionary ones. Also, as explained in a statement, it agrees that "the electoral administration ensures that the compensatory measures correspond to the principle of sufficient compensatory information" of the instructions of the Junta de Castilla y León itself. This norm obliges the public media to "carry out other bilateral or multilateral debates" or, failing that, to "provide sufficient compensatory information on the other candidates, respecting the principles of proportionality and informative neutrality", as the norm explains.
The Election Board was the first to reject that the Vox candidate, the lawyer Juan Garcia-Gallardo, could participate in the debates on public television together with Alfonso Fernández Mañueco (PP), Luis Tudanca (PSOE) and Francisco Igea (Ciudadanos), without the presence of Pablo Fernández (Podemos). In one of its resolutions, the Electoral Board has already alluded to the regulations that allow the far-right candidate to be compensated for his absence in the debates with that "sufficient compensatory information" in other spaces of the public entity.
Vox took the case to the Supreme Court by urgent means and has lost, as reported in a statement by the contentious-administrative chamber of the high court this Thursday. The full resolution will be known in the coming days with all its arguments, but the magistrates point out that, effectively, the far-right party does not meet the clear requirement of having its own parliamentary group and therefore cannot participate.
In this last legislature, the Junta de Castilla y León has had 4 parliamentary groups, 3 of them corresponding to PSOE, PP and Ciudadanos and a mixed group made up of Paul Fernandez (Podemos) and Luis Mariano Santos (Unión del Pueblo Leonés), therefore affected by the same measure. Vox won a seat in the 2019 elections but its only attorney, Jesus Garcia-CondeHe left his post a year ago for personal reasons.
