Claudio Savoia
07/30/2020 - 13:14
- Clarín.com
- Politics
In another of his conceptual turns, President Alberto Fernández went one step further in the pro-government plan to modify the integration of the Supreme Court of Justice. In an attempt to reconcile his historical opinion against such manipulation, on Thursday he said that the highest court "with five members can function, but that's how it is working badly. With anyone you speak to, it tells you that the Court is virtually paralyzed." Official statistics deny that claim.
In 2019, the Court decided 29,191 cases, four times more than the previous year. According to the breakdown of these files, the largest number of resolved issues correspond to criminal, labor and pension issues. This last piece of information is key: copious social security claims are raining down on the offices of the Court due to the appeals of successive governments to the decisions of lower levels against the Anses, due to poor liquidations of retirees. If the Executive Branch fulfilled its commitment not to appeal these judgments, the highest court would see much of its work alleviated.
According to the numbers published months ago by the Court, last year the court resolved 29,191 cases, with the passing of 7,246 sentences. In 2018, 7,835 disputes had been settled, with 6,814 sentences.
According to data recorded in the Court's jurisprudence base, in 2019 1,692 decisions were issued in criminal matters, 1,218 labor and 1,148 social security decisions. Those related to administrative issues (795) and civil and commercial (753) followed in volume. The social security failures were the ones that had the most impact as measured by files, since 16,436 cases were resolved with them.
The discomfort of the judges of the Court with the advance of the government on the court - nobody there has doubts that the objective of the "judicial reform" is to redesign the Court to influence its resolutions of political impact - was reflected this Wednesday with the absence of almost all its members to the act of presentation of the reform, called by Alberto Fernández at the Casa Rosada. Only the president's historic goddaughter in court, Elena Highton, accepted the invitation.
For now, the judges don't want to break spears in public. But Fernández's statements regarding the alleged "paralysis" of the court solved the most calm spirits. "The president is misinformed," they say in two of the offices next to those in the agreement room. And they go back to the statistics. During the first semester of 2019, cases of public importance were dealt with and resolved according to the schedule set and announced by the Court itself, they recall.
The numbers say that, during the past year, May and October were the months with the highest number of sentences handed down, with more than 800 per month. And that on August 22 it turned out to be the agreement with the most number of resolutions: 240. On March 19 the peak of resolved cases was reached with a total of 1,547.
Although the statistics again put the president on the wrong foot, his words are inspired by politics, and not by arithmetic. The Court has in its hands several files of the highest interest for government officials, due to their economic, criminal and also institutional consequences.
Among the latter, his decision regarding the formation of the Judicial Council , the political body that administers the Judiciary, is key, selects the candidates for judges and evaluates them according to the quality of their performance. That body created by the 1994 Constitution was modified in 2006 at the behest of Peronism and under the sword of then Senator Cristina Kirchner. From then on , the ruling party controls the majority necessary to block political appointments or trials . The reform was declared unconstitutional by several judges. But governments appealed until they reached the Court. Many discussions would end if their judges gave their opinion at once.