The parliamentary allies, the junior partner of the Government and even the first opposition party. Nobody gives up; everyone intends to go all the way in the Pegasus case, tightening the screws on Pedro Sánchez so that tomorrow he answers the multitude of questions raised by the espionage of pro-independence leaders and the attacks on the cell phones of the Prime Minister and the Ministers of Defense and the Interior .
Answers and declassification of documents. Practically all the parliamentary forces that are not willing to consider the case settled with a “forced” appearance by Sánchez in which he limits himself to explaining the measures that have been adopted so far to try to clarify the matter agree on these demands.
To this general demand, the partners of the Government add the constitution of an investigation commission. This is a petition to which the PSOE opposes, arguing that the area to address this case is the Official Secrets Commission. The Socialists also reject the declassification of documents insisting that this should only be done at the request of Justice.
Few are those who expect revelations in Sánchez’s appearance, although they do caress the possibility that the president announces his will to promote a reform of the National Security Law and a revision of the laws that regulate the CNI and its judicial control, as as the PNV has proposed in a bill that was admitted for processing by the Congress Board yesterday.
The proposal of the Basque nationalists satisfies in principle a good number of parliamentary forces and, although it would not be enough to silence the demand for assumption of responsibilities posed by the pro-independence formations, it would serve to provide content for the debate that will be held tomorrow in Congress and that is already seen as a barrage of questions with few answers and many reproaches crossed.
The PNV plans to reinforce the political and judicial control of the CNI’s actions, mainly in interventions that affect fundamental rights. He advocates that it be the President of the Government who proposes the person who should lead the intelligence service in order to “establish the direct political responsibility of the highest government official.” It also proposes that the Committee on Reserved Expenses or Official Secrets may know the means by which the interventions that have received judicial authorization are produced.
Precisely in relation to the judicial control of the Center’s activities, it is committed to setting up a “collegiate body made up of three magistrates of the Supreme Court who, unanimously, will agree by means of a reasoned resolution, the granting or not of the requested authorization.”
The director of the CNI, in addition, must specify in his request “the means and resources to be used, detailing their specific characteristics” so that they can be evaluated according to the principle of proportionality. Finally, the magistrates will also be able to carry out a subsequent control because they must be informed by the director of the Center of the degree of execution of each authorization.
JxCat, ERC or Más País consider the PNV proposal “good”, although it is not enough for them to forget their claim to set up a parliamentary investigation commission. United We Can also consider it positive. ERC will attend the debate tomorrow with the intention of knowing from the president “who and why”. In short, his spokesman, Gabriel Rufián, intends to ask Sánchez “all the questions that he would ask, and cannot, in the investigation commission.” He will be relentless because, as he himself admits, relations with the PSOE are now “at their worst moment”.
More Country hopes that Sánchez “does not waste the opportunity” to give explanations. Íñigo Errejón wants to know which institutions have the Pegasus program, what crimes were sought to be prosecuted when spying on the independentistas and how it is possible that the phones of members of the Government had not been checked until the investigation revealed by Citizen Lab was uncovered. More Country It calls for declassifying the Pegasus papers and reformulating the Official Secrets Act because, they insist, “there can be no powers without control.”
United We Can, like the parliamentary allies of the Government, advocates the declassification of documents related to the espionage of the independence parties, and welcomes the proposal of the Basque nationalists. “Anything that leads to more transparency is a good idea,” says Pablo Echenique.
The PDeCAT spokesman, Ferrán Bel, one of those spied on without judicial authorization, will demand explanations about the cases that, like his, were not clarified by the former director of the CNI. For this training, it is not enough for the Government to lend itself to enabling the CNI to provide documentation to the National High Court on espionage on the cell phone of the Prime Minister.
The PP, for its part, expects Sánchez to clarify the main unknowns in relation to the attack on his phone. The spokesperson for the popular party, Cuca Gamarra, insists that the president has no excuse not to do so since the president “knows perfectly what information he has on his mobile, what may have been stolen from him and if that could affect national security” . “The President of the Government”, she emphasizes, “he does not have to be declassified”.
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