Lucia Salinas
08/07/2020 - 10:47
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The Minister of Justice, Marcela Losardo, does not risk any figure yet under the excuse that it must be thought of as an "investment" the amount that will be required to implement the judicial reform that President Alberto Fernández sent to the National Congress. In the Council of the Magistracy and some offices of Comodoro Py agree on two proposals: it will be necessary to dump only in salaries -without counting infrastructure- some 5,000 million pesos per year. The second point at which they converge is that the figure could be even higher, with a deficit scenario: the Judiciary has a projected red for this year of 16,065 million pesos.
The Government's project seeks to establish the operation of 46 federal investigating courts. For what will be called the General Criminal Justice, in the first place it will unify the economic criminal jurisdiction (which has 11 courts of first instance) with the Buenos Aires federal criminal (12 courts).
From that moment on, each current magistrate will work with one of the two secretariats they usually have. Thus, "there will be" 23 secretariats, which will accompany the creation of the same number of new courts.
This jump implies new salaries, investments in infrastructure, supplies, plus monthly maintenance. The first calculation estimates that only considering the first of the items, that is, the expenditure on personnel, between 4,000 and 5,000 million pesos should be spent annually. From Together for Change, through a statement they also estimated that figure.
To understand the dimension of that amount, we must analyze the numbers of the Judicial Power. The annual payment in salaries is 62,465 million pesos. But if we add the expenses for rents, consumer goods, non-personal services, fixed assets and other transfers, the federal and national courts will spend 65,114 million pesos this year .
The document that the general administrator of the Judiciary submitted to the Court in the midst of the Covid Pandemic19 to request assistance from the National Treasury, indicated that the deficit projected for Fiscal Year 2020 amounts to 16,065 million pesos.
A report accessed by Clarín , corresponding to June, shows that 5,411 million pesos were allocated to salaries . Only in Consumer Goods and Fixed Assets, the expenditure was 143.4 million. And with regard to the assets of the passive sector, the demand was 17.5 million.
97% of the general budget of the Judiciary is allocated solely to salaries , according to the official report. "There were no extraordinary investments, and we asked the Supreme Court for two courts to supply what was dumped on supplies to function in the midst of the pandemic," they explained from the Magistracy Council to Clarín , and detailed that the figure exceeds 40 million of pesos .
Like the rest of the State, the Judiciary has the budget extended for 2019. The financial deficit, according to sources from the Council of the Magistracy, has been dragging on for several years. In the organism they see with concern the increase of courts. "With the numbers in red, leading to 46 the courts, with all that that implies, you only increase the economic problems that creep, " explained one of the counselors representing the opposition.
The Justice receives funds under three items: the first one based on the Autarchy Law, then the resources that Congress is authorizing for the funds received by the aforementioned regulations, and in the third instance, help from the National Treasury.
The deficit projected for this year - above 16,000 million pesos - can only be solved with the help of the National State, otherwise the Judiciary would not arrive at the end of the year to guarantee its operation, as proposed by the Council Administration. For example, the first semester could be covered because the Treasury contributed 7,316 million pesos.
When the Crime Chamber rejected the judicial reform in an agreed decision, he referred to the economic situation of the Judicial Power, noting that far from conserving the human resources of the National Justice, it seeks to " scrap them, scatter them and subject them to a long functional agony" . Those resources, say the chambermaids, could "be applied to the improvement of Federal Justice."
In addition, they suggested initiatives with almost zero immediate cost, "which contrasts with the amount of economic resources that the official project entails ."