Cutting off your leg is not a method for losing weight. It is true that if we step on the scale with one less limb, we will confirm an immediate and substantial weight loss. However, in exchange, the damage to our life will be enormous. More harm than benefit. That is why no one in their right mind bets on amputation to get rid of excess kilos.
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A similar obviousness is what the Consell de Garanties Estatutàries has put in writing in its opinion on the urgent law proposal against speculative housing purchases, agreed upon by Salvador Illa and the commons, which guaranteed the former the support of the latter for the Generalitat’s budgets.
The text, which has the backing of the entire left-wing bloc
–PSC, ERC, Comuns, and the CUP– and was supposed to be processed urgently and in a single reading, is, in the eyes of the Consell de Garanties, a superlative legal outrage. The advisory body has knocked it down without leaving a brick standing. It confirms, line by line, the conclusions that any minimally sharp law student would also have reached: we are facing a legislative fiasco of the highest order.
Violation of property rights, inheritance, freedom of enterprise, invasion of State competencies, attempt to legislate provisions related to civil law through the back door. Add serious formal defects, such as the unjustified abuse of the single reading procedure. And a kindergarten-level drafting with multiple contradictions in the articles that destroy legal certainty. Here is a summary of the mess.
All these things, in fact, were already known by the PSC and its partners when they agreed on a text with strong communist ambition. But in politics, narrative and timing rule. On the other hand, rigor and common sense are the first ingredients to be sacrificed on the altar of the necessity of parliamentary arithmetic. Illa wanted his first budgets and the Commons, on their part, wanted to get from the President of the Generalitat some flashy milestone to offer to their increasingly scarce circle of voters. That was the seed of what the Consell Consultiu now unanimously calls, although without using these words, a legislative fiasco.
The Consell Consultiu has no coercive power. Its opinions have only advisory value. It is like having a team of doctors on payroll to take care of you, but without the duty to listen to them and being able to do the opposite of what they prescribe.
This is what commonly happens with its opinions. Although on this occasion, the Govern has already said through Councillor Sílvia Paneque that it will take the opinion into consideration and will look for imaginative ways to rewrite its bill with the aim of making it fit better within legality.
In reality, the PSC is perfectly fine with the blow from the Consell Consultiu. To the point that one can reasonably doubt whether the socialists “expected” the blow or “desired” it, given that for them this bill in its current formulation responds to necessity rather than conviction. So taking advantage of the Consell Consultiu’s opinion, which destroys the text to hit the brakes and reformulate it, is the most convenient option for Salvador Illa.
The problem lies in the substance. It is easy to rectify the forms or the drafting, but the substance of the articles is hard to fix, since it is not in the hands of an autonomous community to reformulate rights such as private property, the use of inherited goods, or to restrict market freedom. Illa and his team will have to decide whether to honor the legal and competency framework or satisfy, with little practical scope, their more leftist partners. They cannot do both at the same time.
We are facing a minor problem for the Govern. With the budgets approved, Illa has guaranteed to reach the end of the legislature without trouble. The important thing was the budgets. The bill against speculation, a necessary filler that had no scope in its original ambition.
Housing is and will continue to be a problem. But the Govern knows, or should know, that to end it they cannot violate the right to private property. As simple as understanding that to lose weight, cutting off your leg does not work.
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