Nicolas Diana
08/09/2020 - 19:54
- Clarín.com
- Politics
These were not easy days for the acting Attorney Eduardo Casal. In recent weeks, Kirchnerism launched an offensive in Congress to try to displace it that included all kinds of complaints about poor performance in the Bicameral Commission for Monitoring the Public Prosecutor's Office and the activation of the Political Trial Commission in Deputies, where the ruling party hopes to deal with a dozen presentations against the chief prosecutor. But despite K's advance on his figure, the Attorney General is preparing to resist and anticipates that he will remain in office. "I am not going to resign. There is no reason why I have to," he assured Clarín .
According to the Prosecutor, since he took office as an interim after the departure of Alejandra Gils Carbó in 2017 , all his acts were adhered to the rules. "The law assigned me a function and I will fulfill it as I have always done," he defends himself before this newspaper. In recent days, he began receiving messages of support from colleagues, judges and lawyers. In addition, he prepares a defense with data and reports in case he is summoned to Congress.
In Casal's environment, they understand that Kirchnerism activated an attrition operation, with complaints included, to force his departure from a position they consider key. And they maintain that a "tough battle" is coming.
For a long time, the sector most linked to Kirchnerism within the ruling party has been targeting him, especially for his actions in the case of the prosecutor in the case of the bribery notebooks, Carlos Stornelli, a declared enemy of Vice President Cristina Kirchner who She is prosecuted in that case as the head of an illicit association.
The K consider that he was not firm enough with Stornelli when he was in absentia for refusing to go to testify before Judge Alejo Ramos Padilla, who was investigating him for alleged links with the false lawyer Marcelo D'Alessio.
Without enough votes in the Senate to appoint Judge Daniel Rafecas as Attorney-two-thirds are needed-, Kirchnerism points to a forced exit from Casal. If he left his post, Víctor Abramovich, current attorney before the Court, would take over as interim. Abramovich was a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and was director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), close to Horacio Verbitsky and Kirchnerism. A profile that at first seems to be friendlier with the interests of the Frente de Todos.
The offensive to remove Casal had two moments of maximum tension last week in the bicameral Commission for Monitoring and Control of the Public Prosecutor's Office chaired by the Kirchnerista Martín Doñate. Last Monday, a dozen lawyers and NGOs questioned the conduct of the Attorney General because of the appointments he made, the disciplinary policy that he applied and the budget management of the agency. After that meeting, the complaints to the Political Trial Commission in Deputies turned in record time, which is chaired by the official Josefina González, who is also a member of La Cámpora.
Two days later, the prosecutor Gabriela Boquín appeared in the bicameral - she has the Argentine Mail case against the Macri family - who denounced a "persecution" against her headed by Casal. The "persecution" to which Boquín referred is linked to the summary that the Procurator initiated ten days ago for a series of complaints of mistreatment and workplace harassment against employees of his prosecutor's office.
From the environment of Casal they defend the summary and assure that it was promoted after the analysis of an Evaluation Council made up of several prosecutors. It is the same that acted in the case of Stornelli.
Boquín's testimony will not be the only one from a representative of the public prosecutor's office before the bicameral. On the list appear the names of the names of Juan Pedro Zoni and Leonel Gómez Barbella , two prosecutors who were working in Comodoro Py and were transferred to other destinations by Casal. Close to the Attorney General, they defend those transfers and argue that they had competed for the charges to which they were finally moved and that it was not appropriate for them to be in federal courts.
One of the stages of the attrition operation has a chapter in Deputies. Although there the ruling party does not have the votes to initiate a jury against Casal, it could obtain an opinion in the Political Trial Commission. In principle, it is difficult for the commission to meet this week since the virtual treatment protocols have expired. But still, from the opposition they question the move and suspect that Kirchnerism seeks to put on "a show." "We believe that there are no elements to prosecute him. And we see an operation to wear him out only because of the desire of Cristina Kirchner," the vice president of that commission, the deputy of the Civic Coalition Juan Manuel López , told Clarín .
The move to remove Casal occurs in parallel with other advances on Justice. With the judicial reform and the Advisory Council Council to evaluate the changes in the Supreme Court as a flag, the ruling party also changed the course of the Anti-Corruption Office, which withdrew from files against former officials and seeks to displace judges who investigate the vice president with the excuse that they were badly transferred, among other measures.