With the departure of Canicoba, a quarter of Comodoro Py's courts is vacant

Lucia Salinas

07/15/2020 - 18:01

• Clarín.com
• Politics

On July 29, after almost 27 years, federal judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral will leave his office in court six of Comodoro Py. With his departure, after having submitted to resignation before President Alberto Fernández, there will be three out of twelve courts left without a titular magistrate . In fact, in the event that Daniel Rafecas' document as Attorney General advances in Congress, there will be four vacant offices. The number is only a portion of the 35 charges that remain unfilled in federal jurisdiction across the country.

At the beginning of the year, the pension reform that advanced on the special regime that includes the Judiciary became an incentive for fifty hundred judges and prosecutors to decide to submit their resignations to the Ministry of Justice led by Marcela Losardo, and so, not lose the pension benefits prior to the modification of the system.

According to official information from the Judicial Council, there are fifty open tenders, some 124 vacancies under different procedures in that body and another 144 vacancies pending in the Executive Branch. The Senate did not enter any documents, in fact the government of Alberto Fernández withdrew 200 documents whose approval had been pending during the administration of Mauricio Macri.

By March, prior to the start of the pandemic by Covid19, 50 resignations were accepted by Minister Losardo. Of this universe of judicial officials, 15 were prosecutors, 5 official defenders and the remaining 30, judges. The number increased slightly during the quarantine months, bringing the number of federal judges to 35 positions to be filled throughout the country.

That figure that includes all the federal courts of the country has a particular photograph: the Comodoro Py Courts. There, where the national political power implicated in alleged acts of corruption in the exercise of public function or outside it is investigated, there will be three offices without their titular judge.

Eleven federal court, in charge of Claudio Bonadio for more than two decades, was vacated after his death. The Buenosairean federal Chamber raffled the subrogation for a year, extendable to another, and was in charge of Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi, head of court eight.

A year ago, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral - head of court six until the end of this month - also subrogated the office that Sergio Torres occupied, today a member of the Supreme Court of the province of Buenos Aires. With the resignation presented 48 hours ago and that is still being analyzed in the Ministry of Justice, the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber must overcome two courts.

To those three free courts could be added that of Daniel Rafecas, if the judge obtains the agreement of Congress to assume as Attorney General, that is, as head of the prosecutors.

In the Retirement Courts they pointed out that there was a similar situation in 2012, when there were four courts without their owners and the judges Sebastián Casanello, Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi, Sebastián Ramos and Luis Rodríguez took over , after the corresponding contest and approval of the Senate. 

Comodoro Py's situation is complex. Several judges suggest that it will take time to fill the vacant positions, because part of the process to do so depends on a political decision "with a government that pronounced itself very critical of the jurisdiction and that is promoting judicial reform that was never sent to Congress."

To those vacancies in courts that have sensitive causes for both Kirchnerism and Macrism, there are other relevant ones: in the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber - responsible for reviewing the decisions of the twelve investigative courts -  there is one of the two rooms that only it has a magistrate . This contest to fill the other two positions was already held during the previous administration, but it was never advanced with the preparation of the order of merit among the candidates.

On the sixth floor, where the Oral Courts in charge of the trials operate, the statistics are even more unfavorable. There are eight TOFs, this means that there must be 24 starting judges. But to date , only four of the Courts have all of their magistrates.

Consequently, there are seven vacancies in the Oral Courts . For example, the TOF 2 that judges Cristina Kirchner for public works has a vacancy; TOF 4, which has the case of "the money route K" against Lázaro Báez, has two free charges; TOF 5 has one charge to fill, and TOF 6 is the most concerning: all three charges are without full magistrates.

Thus, the Oral Courts that hold various oral debates simultaneously subrogate the vacant positions of other TOFs, which, in turn, conduct various trials.