Corruption is not fought by pardoning those who practice it. A hard truth that justifies those who have been upset by the government’s grace measure approved in favor of the former socialist mayor of Linares Juan Fernández; the cultural manager Natalio Grueso, and the former president of the Parliament of Catalonia Laura Borràs.
As expected, most reactions have focused on the partial pardon of the former Junts president. The separatists are excellent lightning rods. They attract, rightly or wrongly, all the electric charge discharged by political storms, big or small.
We are facing the repair of an injustice. Nothing less, but nothing more
The partial pardon for Borràs to avoid prison served yesterday for one thing and its opposite. Without leaving the PSOE, Emiliano García-Page, president of Castilla-La Mancha, linked it to the blackmail of the sovereigntists. Another victory for the secessionists! Another surrender by Pedro Sánchez to attract the Junts members back to the investiture bloc and push the chances of approving the budgets!
On the other hand, from the Government, Óscar López saw all the virtues in the decision of the Council of Ministers. He justified it by relating it, indiscriminately, to the institutional and political normalization derived from the amnesty and pardons granted in the previous legislature. Both made their minor needs outside the mark. But not by mistake, since rambling for their own benefit with Borràs as an alibi was their purpose.
The partial pardon for the Junts member is the result of the persistent request of the TSJC which, in the same sentence in which it condemned her, clearly stated that the prison sentence imposed was the one required by law but clearly disproportionate. In other words, it added that the partial pardon that the Government could grant would serve to repair that injustice. We are facing the most justified pardon of all that can be granted: the one requested by the justice system itself when it considers the sentence it is forced to impose excessive.
This argument would be enough to silence the mouths of García-Page, Óscar López and others. But to those who still see it as the result of a political maneuver, it would also be worth reminding them that Laura Borràs’s use value, in order to regain Junts’ favor, tends to zero.
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Beyond the repair of the injustice recognized by the TSJC when condemning her, there is no negotiation logic behind this pardon, much less blackmail, Junts-Government. One negotiates with what one considers valuable and essential. And, politically, Laura Borràs ceased to be so for Junts when its secretary general, Jordi Turull, patiently executed the plan to unseat her from the party’s control room.
Other considerations must be made about Minister Óscar López, very prone to mixing apples and oranges. The Borràs case has nothing to do with the independence process or the ideology of the now partially pardoned. Her conviction was for more prosaic reasons: the direct awarding of public contracts to a friend, after splitting the amounts to chain orders without the need for a tender.
The government pardon for the woman not to enter prison adds no value to reconciliation, nor to institutional and political normality. It rectifies an excessive sentence at the request of the one who imposed it. We are facing the repair of an injustice. Nothing less, but nothing more. Neither separatist blackmail, nor contribution to the normality achieved by the pardons of the previous legislature or the amnesty law, regardless of the mess into which the latter turned, first in its negotiation, then in its drafting and finally in its application.
One is tempted to believe that the Government knew that pardoning Laura Borràs along with the rest would end up shining a light on the independence issue. And that this would make the pardon of a former socialist mayor and a cultural manager who did enrich themselves personally with their crimes, unlike Borràs, more palatable. It is law that separatism serves for all sorts of troubles. Sometimes, not always, unintentionally. This is the case.
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