The Supreme Court has rejected the appeal filed by a residual political party called Iustitia Europa, which is acting as the popular prosecutor in the case against Begoña Gómez, against the vote count in the last European elections in June. The judges understand that the party, which obtained less than 27,000 votes, has not provided any evidence of irregularities in the counts carried out in ten provinces and ordered it to pay costs, considering that its appeal “lacks the slightest legal basis and is” and “completely unfounded.”
After several years of promoting conspiracy theories about the recounts, the Spanish parliamentary right of PP and Vox abandoned this electoral tactic in the last European elections, monopolized in the last year by the current MEP Alvise Pérez. It was after the European elections of June 9 that the extreme right launched into questioning the electoral results, without providing any evidence and abandoning the strategy after its poor reception.
It was the Iustitia Europa party that took up the gauntlet and went to the Supreme Court announcing that it was denouncing “very serious irregularities” in the counts of a dozen provinces. The party, led by the lawyer Luis María Pardo who during the pandemic filed numerous lawsuits on behalf of the anti-vaccine association Liberum, had obtained 26,611 votes shortly after being accepted by Judge Peinado as a popular accusation in the case against Begoña Gómez.
The Supreme Court’s ruling rejecting their claims came on 18 July, and the party has already announced that it will take its complaints to the Constitutional Court. Complaints rejected by the Contentious-Administrative Chamber have, for now, only resulted in a sentence of 500 euros for costs.
Iustitia Europa called for the annulment of the votes in ten provinces, including Madrid, Bizkaia, Malaga and Seville. It also called for a new general vote to be held in those territories and even for a preliminary question to be sent to the European Court of Justice on the matter.
The Supreme Court, with the support of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, denies all the irregularities alleged by the political party regarding the fairness of the European elections in Spain. And it recalls that, in addition, it was more than 250,000 votes away from being able to obtain a seat, so not even those alleged errors in the count would give it access to the European Parliament. Firstly, the Supreme Court explains that the appeal against some agreements of the Central Electoral Board “says nothing” about how it could have influenced the proclamation of elected MEPs.
The appeal claimed that the electoral administration had been “replaced” by the executive power through Indra, “imposing a different system” for counting votes. The Supreme Court responded: “No data, not even circumstantial, is provided to support this serious allegation that represents a subversion of the electoral system.”
The judges are reviewing the territories in which, according to the party, these irregularities occurred, and they have found none. In Madrid, for example, “the general scrutiny was carried out by the Provincial Electoral Board without any irregularities and the counting of the votes was done without the representative of Iustitia Europa having made any claim in this regard,” explains the Contentious-Administrative Chamber.
The Supreme Court explains that, in this case, the Iustitia Europa party should be ordered to pay the costs, which has already announced that it will take the case to the Constitutional Court. “As we have just seen, its appeal lacks the slightest legal basis and is therefore completely unfounded,” they say about the lawsuit.
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