The Constitutional Court agrees with Teresa Rodríguez against Podemos and IU in Andalusia

Teresa Rodríguez in 2015, when she was still leader of Podemos in Andalusia, in the Parliament of Andalusia.PACO FUENTES

The Constitutional Court has granted protection to former deputy Teresa Rodríguez and eight other members of the Andalusian Parliament who were expelled from their parliamentary group in 2020 at the request of Podemos and IU, after breaking with both Rodríguez’s formation, Anticapitalistas, with which he had been coalition. The ruling estimates that the Bureau of said Parliament violated the fundamental rights of all of them by accepting said expulsion without correctly applying the chamber’s regulations, and this caused them to remain in the autonomous assembly as non-attached deputies, which meant less intervention times and less funds for their parliamentary work.

The ruling – for which Judge María Luisa Segoviano, from the progressive sector of the court, was the speaker – concludes that the contested Board agreements violated the rights of political representation of the appellants. She considers that the declaration of the acquisition of the status of non-attached deputy affects the core of the representative function of the deputies, since “the power to constitute a parliamentary group is projected not only to its creation and integration but also to remaining in them.” . She adds that the status of non-attached deputy, “even though it is a constitutional institution and cannot be said to have a sanctioning nature, objectively implies disadvantageous possibilities for parliamentary action compared to when one is part of a parliamentary group.”

In substance, the resolution accepts the arguments of Teresa Rodríguez and her expelled colleagues, who were accused by the Podemos leadership of “transfuguism.” The appellants stated in their appeal that the contested agreements lacked regulatory support, since the will of the parliamentary group, in which they were the majority, to cancel them had not been proven. They also alleged that their change to non-attached status damaged the core of their representative function due to the loss of the possibility of being integrated into a parliamentary group.

The ruling highlights that when the Board made these deputies non-attached, it did not make a correct reading of the regulations of the Andalusian Parliament, which “did not include any provision regarding the obligation for the groups to have internal regulations, causes of expulsion of a group or the way in which their withdrawal should be accredited to acquire the status of non-attached deputy, which was included through the reform of the 2021 regulations.

The Constitutional Court argues in its resolution that directly identifying the withdrawal of a party with the withdrawal of the parliamentary group “represents an innovation in the regulations, as evidenced by the subsequent modification” that was made to the regulations of the Andalusian Parliament, in which “ “This automatic transfer has already been included for cases of transfuguism.”

After learning of the ruling, Rodríguez has stressed that “three years and one legislature later”, The guarantee body “recognizes that an IU deputy could not expel 11 Adelante Andalucía deputies from her own parliamentary group just because they conspired with PP, PSOE, Vox and Ciudadanos.” In the same thread on “not to harm the centralist parties of the regime in the last elections, to everyone, including Sumar.”

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When her forced departure from her parliamentary group occurred, Teresa Rodríguez posted a tweet in which she stated: “PSOE, PP and Vox approve, at the proposal of IU, my expulsion and that of my colleagues from the parliamentary group during my maternity leave. All the talking about diets and salary cuts has made them agree on something: they hate me. It is a legal outrage. “We will appeal.” Two and a half years later, the Constitutional Court has agreed with him. Rodríguez was number two on the lists of Adelante Andalucía, of which she is spokesperson, in the general elections of 23-J. Previously, in December of last year, she had returned to her teaching work at an educational center in Puerto Real, after having left the Andalusian Parliament that same month.

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