Carlos Vidal, Full Professor: "In order to act objectively and efficiently, the board Electoral needs legislation adapted to the times, and in this respect our law leaves much to be desired".
- The Parliament of Navarra has hosted the XXII workshop of the classroom of Parliamentary Law of the University of Navarra, focused on regional elections and electoral processes.
PhotoUnaiBeroiz/The Full Professor of Constitutional Law, Carlos Vidal, during his lecture in the Parliament of Navarra.
21 | 10 | 2022
"In order to act with objectivity and efficiency, the board Electoral needs a legislation adapted to the times, and in this our law leaves much to be desired". Professor Carlos Vidal Prado has thus demanded changes in the electoral rules and regulations that favor the proper functioning of the Central Electoral board .
Full Professor of Constitutional Law and board member of the Central Electoral board , Professor Carlos Vidal Prado has given a lecture on the occasion of the XXII workshop of the classroom of Parliamentary Law, organized by the University of Navarra and the Parliament of Navarra, which was held this morning in the parliamentary seat. With the degree scroll The guarantees of the electoral process. the board central electoral, Carlos Vidal has explained the origin of this control body, its functions and the challenges that arise in the future and that, in his opinion, go through changes in the current legislation.
"The board Central Electoral has acquired more prominence in recent years due to the insufficiency of the electoral rules and regulations to address new phenomena, derived, among other factors, from political fragmentation (the emergence of new parties that have an impact on the polls but have not obtained representation in previous elections), from the need to conduct electoral campaign by people incarcerated in prisons, by the overlapping of electoral processes, as occurred in 2019; and to cite the most recent, the holding of elections in status health emergency or the problems posed by social networks and digital platforms", he pointed out.
Vidal has exposed the board Central Electoral as an institution "final" for the consolidation of the electoral regime and democracy in Spain. "The electoral boards have as mission statement to watch over the cleanliness of the electoral process and to avoid any interference that could condition the result", he stressed.
Carlos Vidal has then described the electoral administration as a peculiar, complex administration, not framed in the Executive power, but neither in the Legislative nor in the Judicial; which enjoys a position of supremacy over all the actors involved in the electoral operations and even over all the other Public Administrations, which have attributed functions related to the electoral organization; and he cited its five main characteristics: "It is independent, clearly judicialized in its composition, specialized, non-permanent (except for the board Central Electoral and the autonomic boards, wherever they exist) and hierarchical".
20 years of classroom Parliamentary Law: a bridge between the University and public institutions
Prior to Professor Vidal's lecture , the President of the Parliament of Navarra, Unai Hualde, was in charge of presenting the workshop and introducing the discussion. After a call for "reflection and comparative study" of the different procedures concerning the administration and electoral guarantees, Hualde urged to avoid delegitimizing discourses. After insisting on the insecurity that, in "times of populism", generates this class of speeches, he underlined: "The institutions are above the parties, but they cannot be above the laws or the citizenship".
School The dean of the University of Navarra's Law School, Mercedes Galán, also took the floor and thanked the Parliament of Navarra's partnership for organizing these educational activities for students. "We are all political subjects, citizens who participate in public life with our vote. I want to encourage this workshop to be especially useful, on the guarantees of the electoral process and the importance of citizen participation in these processes," he concluded. For her part, the professor and director of classroom of Parliamentary Law, Asun de la Iglesia, made a tour of the 20-year history of classroom and stressed the importance of "building bridges" between the knowledge generated at the University and public institutions.
During the event there has been a roundtable in which professors Leyre Burguera Ameave (UNED) and Andrés Dueñas (University of Valladolid) have reflected on the regional electoral systems, electoral campaigns (the blurred lines between information and propaganda or the differences between an electoral campaign -which is conceived only with the goal to attract votes for fifteen days- and an institutional campaign).
