Prosecutor wants Mas to be banned from public office for 10 years for 9-N symbolic vote

Barcelona (CNA).- Former Catalan President, Artur Mas, may face a 10-year ban from public office for allowing the 9-N symbolic vote on independence in 2014. This is what Catalonia’s Public Prosecutor requested this Monday, together with a 9-year ban for the other two public figures summonsed over the same case, former Vice President Joana Ortega and former Catalan Minister for Education Irene Rigau. “It is an honour to be sentenced by a Spanish State which doesn’t respect the separation of powers”, stated Mas, who described the whole case as “a chain of nonsense” . Judges Francisco Bañeres and Emilio Sánchez Ulled considered that Mas, Ortega and Rigau were “fully aware” that by preparing the non-binding consultation “they were breaking the mandatory rulings of the Spanish Constitutional Court” which urged the Catalan executive to stop the process four days before the 9-N took place. Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, expressed his support for the summonsed and stated that “they are not alone”. 

“How can listening to the people and organising a vote which was non-binding be crimes?” Mas asked this Monday during an appearance before the press. The former Catalan President assured that he “would do the same again” since “for a democrat and Catalan sovereigntist it is an honour to be sentenced for listening to the people” and accused the Spanish Government of “not respecting the separation of powers” and “abusing the power of the Spanish Constitutional Court”.

“A chain of nonsense”

During an appearance before the press, Mas said that the Spanish State wanted “to turn a democratic expression into a judicial coven” by “processing those who listened to the people and turned their demands into facts” by putting out the ballot boxes during the 9-N. According to Mas, the whole case of the 9-N prosecution “is a chain of nonsense” and accused current Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, of “ignoring what the separation of powers is”. “A public servant can’t say that somebody failed to fulfil the law before there is a firm sentence”, he said and considered it “more proper of a Francoist”.

“Very good news”, says PP’s leader in the Parliament

Current Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, stressed that Mas “is just like all the other citizens” and is therefore being judged to clarify whether he flouted the rules by allowing the 9-N symbolic vote to take place. “The law is applied to everyone and if somebody fails to fulfil it, in a Rule of Law, it has consequences”, she stated.

In a similar vein, Conservative People’s Party (PP) leader in the Parliament, Xavier García Albiol, considered the sentence against Mas, Ortega and Rigau demanded by the Public Prosecutor “very good news” and an “example of democratic hygiene”.