The Constitutional Court (TC) ratified this Wednesday the vote of labor reform at the Congress of Deputies held in February 2022 after rejecting the appeal of the former PP deputy Alberto Caseroof which voting error allowed approval of the standard.
Legal sources inform LaSexta that the plenary session of the Court of Guarantees has The former MP’s appeal was unanimously rejectedalthough the judges of the conservative bloc Enrique Arnaldo and Concepción Espejel cast concordant votes, that is, they agree with the decision but disagree with the argument.
Casero’s appeal is the first to be decided by the court, which is awaiting one from the PP, another from its secretary general, Cuca Gamarra, and a third from Vox, although sources indicate that what was resolved in this first appeal will probably be resolved in practice.
Casero said in his appeal that his telematic vote – which was decisive for the outcome of the votewith 175 votes for validation against 174 against – had been affected by a “obvious error of computer or human origin“Well, once published, this reflected a “yes” when I wanted to vote “no.”
And that, once the error was confirmed, he informed the PP so that it would transmit the situation to the president of the Congress before the vote in person, which Gamarra did. The president of the Congress at the time, the socialist Meritxell Batet, decided to consider the telematic vote as verified and not to convene the Council of the Chamber to rule on Casero’s request to cancel his telematic vote and to do it in person.
The court states that the verification of the personal vote was carried out in accordance with parliamentary regulations, which establish that The vote would be conducted via the House intranet.with the introduction of username and password, without further verification requirements.
Furthermore, he approves Batet’s decision not to convene the Council because Casero himself did not request the revocation of his telematic vote (but he did so, once the call for a vote had been made, by the leadership of his group); he was not present in plenary session at the start of the vote, but entered the chamber at the end of the vote; and, when he did so, he did not attempt to vote in person either.
In this sense, the court emphasizes that Casero was responsible for “extreme diligence” if he considered it appropriate to participate personally in the plenary hearing due to his recovery, “taking into account that participation in plenary sessions is not only a right, but also an obligation of deputies.”
Casero left the party in March 2023 after having been pursued by the Supreme Court for the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement in relation to alleged irregularities in five contracts while he was mayor of Trujillo (Cáceres) in 2017 and 2018. Last November, he reached an agreement with the prosecution to avoid prison and accepted one year and nine months in prison, six months of forfeiture and the payment of a fine compensation of almost 70,000 euros.
