Who Runs and Who Walks?

Much has been written about the fall-out from the case of the deputy from the Canaries Alberto Rodríguez. First, the (unsympathetic and fellow-Canarian) Supreme Court judge Marchena (wiki) found him guilty exclusively on the word of a policeman for giving the said officer a kick during a protest in 2014. No other police officers present at the demonstration were either called or were able to confirm the assault. The president of Podemos Ione Belarra says it never happened, with the observation that ‘the while point being was to get him out of Parliament’, Video proof also shows it never happened, but the Podemos crowd are apparently held (under law?) to a different standard. (Mind you, El Español uses the same video to say that it did happen).

Rodríguez also denies the charge, pointing out that a six foot five inch (1.98m) fellow with dreadlocks tends to stick out in a crowd – yet no one (except our friend the policeman) saw him kick anyone. Why – incidentally – wasn’t he arrested at the time for this attack, when he was just another citizen? He is taking his case to the Court of Human Rights in Brussels, which will allow us plenty of time to forget this extraordinary story. The Judge furthermore insisted that Rodríguez should lose his seat in the Cortes despite the sentence only being 45 days of political disqualification; retroactively applied! 

Then there are the ‘64,000 people’ who voted for him. The lanky politician reacted to the court ruling: “This has been an assault on the popular and democratic will of the Canarian people by the Establishment”. According to the Constitution, he cannot be sacked, but, under pressure from the right-wing media and parties, together with the truly impartial and apolitical judiciary, the Speaker of the Cortes finally ordered his dismissal

Rodríguez later said he wouldn’t sue the speaker, Meritxell Batet, for her action, although an anti-corruption association called the ACODAP (who is?), and run by a retired judge, has since denounced Judge Marchena for his ruling in the case. 

To round off the story, Alberto Rodríguez has now resigned from Podemos.  

LaSexta writes here of something called ‘lawfare’ – where the forces of the right-wing judiciary poke their noses into politics. It says ‘The conviction, without evidence, of deputy Alberto Rodríguez and the attempt to disqualify him as a deputy is the latest strategy of the judiciary to influence the legislature…’.

Gerado Tece, in a powerful essay at Ctxt, writes that ‘This Alberto Rodríguez thing does not set a dangerous precedent because the loss to society isn’t him, it is the state of quality and democratic decency, and that was already demolished a long time ago’.