08/01/2020 - 22:00
- Clarín.com
- Opinion
Cristina Fernández had in her two terms three battles that marked her on fire. The conflict with the countryside, the offensive against the media and the attempt to democratize Justice. It was, in truth, take it over to stop causes of corruption started during her administration. Not later, as the Kirchner story now indicates.
In just eight months in office, Alberto Fernández has already dealt with two lawsuits on that agenda. The mess in the countryside resurfaced due to the decision to intervene and expropriate the agro-industrial Vicentin. The president has just repealed the DNU of origin as a way to launder a fait accompli: its infeasibility. We will see the situation because Governor Omar Perotti's alternative plan was also wrecked.
The clash with the Judiciary is looming over the reform project that, in this case, also covers the Supreme Court. The expectation remains regarding the media, whose link with the government has flashes (instigated action by militants and the Justice against journalists), although it remains within tolerable parameters of tension.
The description is eloquent. The political weight and needs of the vice president are being imposed on the official administration . Alberto's priorities were different. Try to recover the economy from the crisis inherited from Mauricio Macri. Quickly negotiate debt. Seek political consensus with which, he repeated, he was willing to govern. Becoming the man who came to end the rift.
It is true that the pandemic suddenly broke out. Misfortune, however, opened the door to two opportunities. Thinning the radicalized proposals of Christianity. Amass your own political capital so as not to depend so much on the natural leadership of the vice president. The use of quarantine as an exclusive tool against the coronavirus and the option only of infectious diseases as allies, aborted both possibilities. Alberto continues to apply to quarantine - which lasts much longer than calculated - trying to manage the good popularity, in decline, that remains. The times politics prevails on the scene is by Cristina's empire.
Perhaps the vice president's rush to clean up her story has pushed a strategic government error. It had its origin in the Patria Institute. That advance against Vicentín produced effects that seem to consolidate. There is a social sector, expressed in 41% of the votes in 2019, in a deliberative state. He protests with marches or saucepans whenever he sees a risk to liberties. Or suspicion of tricks to enshrine impunity. In the same way, it helps the unity of Let's change that, in a framework of harmony, perhaps it would not have been so simple. Both situations attack any consensus and the desire to solve the crack.
The judicial reform was an issue that Alberto brandished during the campaign. He never considered it necessary, until Cristina carved, to deal with the transformation of the Supreme Court. Their turns begin to grind the value of the word and confidence. Keys to political exercise. When the protests by Vicentín happened, he said that they were "confused people." By escalating the lawsuit, he took over the initiative that did not belong to him. Also of the error: "I thought that the intervention would make people happy," he justified. His compliance with the Supreme Court does not date only from those 2016 statements, now viralized. She repeated the idea after taking over. He discussed it with at least two judges. He just amended it with another pirouette: "With five members it can work, but it is working badly," he explained.
The Supreme Court issue ends up intoxicating the entire debate on judicial reform . The focus on the Tribunal would be an unavoidable message for lower levels. Its role as head of a state power would be questioned with the consequent devaluation. In Kirchnerism there are those who even imagine direct actions. Political trials? The lawyer K Alejandro Rúa urged to end the "Macrista Court".
The vice president's tirade against the highest court has chapters. The first happened in 2013 when four of the magistrates - with the dissent of Raúl Zaffaroni - declared the project unconstitutional so that the members of the Judicial Council were elected by popular vote. To establish militant justice. Before Cristina left power in 2015, the Court also stamped the unconstitutionality on the Subrogation Law. Another mechanism of colonization. At the time, Alberto harangued about the "deplorable" task of the Kirchner government in judicial matters.
During the macrismo, the vice president proposed several maneuvers - speculating on complaints by Elisa Carrió - to overthrow Ricardo Lorenzetti. They stopped because, already in time for reconciliation, Alberto convinced her not to advance against Rafaela's lawyer. Cristina was even happy when, in a surprise move, three of the judges displaced Lorenzetti from the ownership of the body. That joy was overshadowed as soon as the crowned Carlos Rosenkrantz turned out.
The final offense against the Court and especially Lorenzetti, was consolidated with the trial for the public work where Cristina is accused as the head of an illicit association. The Court was about to suspend the initiation of the hearings when it granted the appeals filed by the defense. But she felt that she should consider them after the sentence.
The approach to the metamorphosis of the Supreme Court augurs a real nuisance. Not only by the nomination of a very partial Advisory Board in which, as a leading figure, Carlos Beraldi, Cristina's defender in the causes of corruption, appears. Also, due to the debate on the number of judges that in Argentina, in opposite directions, settles in very frequently. It reflects the instability and the change of the game rules that explain the scarce credibility . Any appointment, in addition, requires a special majority in the Senate. The great dilemma would be its purported division into several rooms that would violate the constitutional principle that identifies the Court as a single body. If such a rule is respected, a decision of the penal chamber, for example, should also be voted by the remaining chambers. Non-viable.
With regard to judicial reform, a thread of the story can be seen. In the matrix it can be discovered that it is related to the one that Carlos Menem implemented in his time. Strange, because Alberto questioned that model and the macrista in his presentation. He praised the time of Raúl Alfonsín and omitted that of Kirchnerism. There would also be assimilable situations. The plan of Menemism was born when corruption lurked. The so-called “Yomagate”, a money laundering scandal derived from drug trafficking. Pure chance?
Menem traced two tracks between 1990-92. First, it increased from five to nine the members of the Supreme Court. Then it modified the Civil, Electoral, and Penal Code and created a number of new courts. The feds alone would now go from 23 to 46. There would be an additional 108 prosecutors. A detail: the former president consecrated for the first time the figure of the repentant but leaving it aside in corruption cases. The merit of dealing with "forgetfulness" went to the Congress of the macrista time. It is the one that Kirchnerism tries to abolish.
Neither judicial reform nor the transformation of the Court can be separated from the context. Other things happen. The Council of the Magistracy approved the review of the transfer of judges during Macrismo. Coincidentally, three of them - Leopoldo Bruglia, Pablo Bertuzzi and Germán Castelli - understand key corruption cases against Cristina. The first two have the endorsement of an agreement of the Court, in 2018. The deputy Graciela Camano, whose vote allows that revision, maintains that the conditions set by the highest Court were not met. Six other directors believe otherwise. Judicialization appears.
The offensive also continues so that the interim attorney, Eduardo Casal, leaves his post. Not even minimal forms are respected. In the theater set up for the announcement were the members of the Advisory Board and even a representative of the Supreme Court, Elena Highton. The only one who dared at the request of her former student, the President. Casal was not invited.
According to judicial experts, the implementation of a prosecutor's office would consume close to $ 4.5 million a month to the State. A court would involve twice as much. Shows the volume of the probable delivery. Is Argentina in a position to face this expense? Is it correct when you explain to creditors that you do not have payment terms? Is it reasonable with the economic-social catastrophe that the pandemic will leave?
Hecatomb is not just about poverty. Also, with core issues whose responsibility falls on the ruling class. After the decline he showed at the beginning of the quarantine, insecurity returned with fury. And few answers. In the midst of helplessness, society must have listened impassively how an mayor (Mario Ishii, from José.C. Paz) confessed to being contemplative with those who traffic drugs in an ambulance to earn a peso. It was not isolated. On the contrary, part of Buenos Aires Peronism, including Minister Sergio Berni and Axel Kicillof's chief of staff, came out to support him. He claimed bad intent to interpret his words. Shameful.
Can there be more symbolic conduct than that on indigent public morals? Can you trust, with that landscape, the promise of angelic reforms?