A court Tuesday summoned Catalonia's president to face possible charges for holding a 2014 independence ballot, a suit his allies branded politically motivated as they push to break away from Spain. The move by the Catalonia high court came as a bitter stand-off between Artur Mas and the Spanish government deepened after he and fellow separatists won control of their regional parliament on Sunday.
Buoyed by that result, the separatists vowed to push on towards a declaration of independence by 2017 but Madrid promised to defend the unity of Spain. In a judicial investigation dating back to last year, the court called Mas to go before a judge on October 15, in a written ruling released on Tuesday.
Prosecutors accuse him of civil disobedience, abuse of power and embezzlement of public funds in organising last November's ballot. "We are faced with a political lawsuit, the political orchestration of a case brought by the state prosecution service," the spokeswoman for Mas's government, Neus Munte, told a news conference. Mas and two other officials are accused of breaking the law by organising the ballot on November 9, 2014, in defiance of an injunction by Spain's Constitutional Court. If found guilty they could be banned from public office.
Mas wanted his rich north-eastern region to follow the example of Scotland and Canada's Quebec region by holding a referendum on independence. Nearly 2.3 million of Catalonia's 5.5 million voters took part in the symbolic ballot. About 1.9 million voted for independence but the poll was not legally binding.
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