What does the President of the Government respond to?

Yes in The scarlet letter the punishment he had to endure Horses Prynne It was to have the A for adulteress sewn on her dress and clearly visible, here and now it is about engraving the C for corruption in the initials of the political adversary.

We are not even a society, he said. Larra in 1838, but a battlefield. Two centuries later it seems, unfortunately, that to some extent we still are.

The design of the parliamentary investigation commissions in both the Constitution (art. 76) and the Appearances Law of 1984 (art. 3.2) are not a sufficient dam to stop this passion of the parties for the cancellation of the adversary through the Penal Code.

The criminal investigation and the parliamentary investigation can be superimposed on the same facts at the same time. And when this happens, the demand for political responsibility becomes significantly more difficult.

This is what we are seeing in the call Koldo case and we will continue to see it in similar cases. When a member of the Government or a public official is summoned before the criminal jurisdiction and at the same time before a parliamentary commission of inquiry, the one summoned by Parliament is hermetically sealed in its shellblocks the information or administers it in homeopathic doses, referring the eventual assumption of political responsibilities to what results in the judicial process.

With the current constitutional and legal design, only consensual conventions could allow the differentiation between political responsibility and criminal responsibility and make it possible for Parliament and the Courts to do their work without interference.

But in our parliamentary democracy we still lack shared practices regarding the political responsibility of our rulers. And this is how we end up confusing political responsibility with criminal responsibility, with the risk of emptying the first and politicizing the second.

Would it be useful to point out how the demand for responsibilities works in the most consolidated parliamentary system in our environment such as the British one? Perhaps it is of some interest to remember it.

Normally when we talk about political responsibility we think only of the moment of reproach (resignations, dismissals and disapprovals) and not so much of the moment of accountability. The English differentiate it with the terms of accountability y responsibility.

For this reason, the demand for responsibilities is broken down into a first task of giving accounts of the agent to his principal, and only later does the well-deserved reproach occur.

The first thing, therefore, that the President of the Government is obliged to do in this Commission of Inquiry is to report the facts known to him about the so-called Koldo case. This is the first obligation before Parliament. Criminal responsibility, morality and politics are very different.

But every statement of responsibility (criminal, political or moral) has the same canonical structure: A accuses B; He responds and A is satisfied or, if not, reproaches A for his behavior.

“Here and now we are talking about political responsibilities (which is what Parliament is responsible for clarifying) and not criminal responsibilities for false testimony (which is the responsibility of judges and magistrates)”

The Germans plastically express this connection between responsibility and accountability with the term Responsibility (responsibility) that comes from the verb responsible and that means responding to accusations, defending yourself in court. Politically, to be responsible is, first of all, to be subject to the obligation to respond. To be accountable to the principal.

And this is the first thing that is expected to occur in the aforementioned appearance: that the opposition asks and that the president responds. Let the opposition demand an account and let the president render it accountable.

The information must be immediate, complete and faithful. The first is already difficult after the months that have passed since the first information about the case appeared in the media.

It remains to be seen whether the information offered by the president is complete. And in any case this must be true. Because No one, much less the president, is allowed to lie to Parliament.

The existence of article 502.3 of the Penal Code, which classifies false testimony before investigative commissions as a crime, has been recalled, I think untimely. Again we slide to the Penal Code and leave Parliament.

Because whether or not the aforementioned article applies in this case, the judges and magistrates will say at the time, in due process and with due guarantees. Here and now we are talking about political responsibilities (which is what Parliament is responsible for clarifying) and not criminal responsibilities for false testimony (which is the responsibility of judges and magistrates).

In any case, what must be clear is that lying cannot have a place in parliament if we understand parliamentary democracy as an agency relationship between a principal (Parliament) and its agent (Government).

In the most classic benchmark of European parliamentarism, Great Britain, if a minister lies to the House he is expected to present his resignation. This convention of inexcusable application has just been put in writing by the Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer in your Ministerial Code.

The prohibition of lying in parliament is also the rule that has generated the greatest consensus in the democracies around us.

The latest cases that I know of resignations in Europe for lying are those of the German Minister of Defense, Karl Theodor Gutenbergin 2011 for plagiarizing the thesis. For the same reason, the German Minister of Education resigned in 2013, Annete Schaven and in 2024 the English Transport Minister resigned, Louise Haigfor lying to his insurance company.

In Spain, despite the uproar over parliamentarians’ CVs and some theses, the cases of resignation that we could cite are those of the Minister of Culture and that of the Minister of Health in 2018.

Faithfully reporting the facts known is, therefore, the first and main obligation of the President of the Government. But… for what facts does a president respond in the double sense of being accountable and being blameworthy?

Here we get entangled again and again with legal-criminal categories of the blame in choosing and the guilt in surveillanceclearly insufficient.

“The President of the Government, in addition to his responsibility for his own acts and decisions, is also vicariously responsible for those inappropriate actions of his subordinates”

Of course, first of all, he is responsible for his own behavior, his actions and his decisions. And even about their projects. But also, and this is a qualitative difference with respect to criminal responsibility, he is responsible for the actions of his subordinates.

Since a famous case that occurred in Great Britain in 1954 (the Critchel Down Affair) the classic principles of responsibility of the English Cabinet before the House have been consolidated. Its core is in the intervention of Sir David Maxwell Fyfe in that debate.

Its conclusions, which have been reworked over the years, were codified in times of John Mayor (Questions of Procedure for Ministers; QPM) and function as current practices. Its substance can be summarized like this:

If a subordinate performs an action of which the superior disapproves and of which he had no prior knowledge, the minister or from a stronger The Prime Minister is not obliged to defend such an action that he did not know about and that he disapproved of. In this case you must take action with the subordinate in question as soon as you have met him and must immediately report to Parliament. If you do not act this way, you incur liability.

In this model, the President of the Government, in addition to his responsibility for his own acts and decisions, is responsible for everything his subordinates do if he has ordered or authorized it. He is also vicariously responsible for those inappropriate actions of his subordinates, in this case Messrs. abalos– Koldo– Cerdanwhich he would not have corrected as soon as he met them. As well as in his case, of not having immediately informed Parliament.

Therefore, the appearance of the president should serve, therefore, for him to report promptly and truthfully whether he had any participation in the call Koldo case. What did you know about that case? When did you become aware of the facts that are reported. What decisions did he make? And why, if any, he did not inform Parliament.

This is what President Sánchez responds to politically before the Commission. And it will be the Chamber that will assess whether his explanation is complete and truthful and, consequently, whether or not his management in this matter deserves political reproach.

Criminal responsibilities, if any, are dealt with in another venue and with other rules of the game. Confusing and mixing political responsibility and criminal responsibility means, in practice, emptying Parliament and running the risk of politicizing Justice. To Parliament what belongs to Parliament and to the Courts what belongs to the Courts.

*** Virgilio Zapatero is emeritus rector of the University of Alcalá.