Spain’s Supreme Court rejected on Friday to immediately suspend the decision of the country’s Electoral Authority (JEC) ordering that the Catalan president Quim Torra be disqualified from his post. Torra’s lawyers had requested an immediate suspension of the JEC ruling.
The ruling to disqualify Torra from office follows Catalonia’s High Court of Justice finding him guilty of disobedience on 19 December.
The disobedience was failing to remove signs in time that were in favour of the jailed Catalan leaders from the Catalan government’s headquarters during the electoral campaign, as ordered by the electoral authority.
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Torra had previously said that he would not accept the order from the JEC, calling it a ‘coup d’état’. Torra also appeared before an extraordinary plenary session of the Catalan Parliament at his own request last Saturday, where he was ratified as president of the Catalan government.
On Thursday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, now officially re-elected, held a telephone conversation of approximately seven minutes with Torra, and they have agreed to meet shortly after the new coalition government has been formed.
The telephone conversation was described as ‘cordial’, during which Sánchez told Torra that he wants to resume dialogue and that he has ‘the sincere will to try to settle the political conflict in Catalonia.’
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On Friday the Supreme Court judges said Torra’s lawyers had give no reasons for any ‘particular urgency’ in deciding on the matter, and have given the electoral board and the public prosecutor five days to also have their say before a final deliberation is made.
Meanwhile, the Catalan Parliament speaker, Roger Torrent, has told Torra that he is ‘still a member of parliament’, adding that ‘the Electoral Authority’ does not have the capacity’ to determine otherwise.
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