Marcela Losardo, the minister and friend of the President who is still in the crosshairs of Kirchnerism

Federico Mayol

02/14/2021 18:11

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 02/14/2021 6:11 PM

Marcela Losardo was surprised.

It had been a long time since he had participated in the public debate or appeared on the agenda of official activities broadcast daily by presidential spokesmen.

2020 ended up being questioned, in harsh terms, by the Instituto Patria: according to Cristina Kirchner, it was called "officials who do not work."

2021 started the same.

His surprise statements this weekend, purposely amplified by Alberto Fernández, sought, in part, to alleviate internal questions.

Close friend and historical partner of the President

-they met at law school and became so close that at the end of 1999 they registered the Inmueble Callao 1960 society, still in force-, the Minister of Justice is not part of the nucleus of officials, leaders and K operators who nonstop obey Cristina Kirchner, obsessed with the Judiciary.

But Losardo is not only not a part, but has been, for a long time, in the crosshairs of Kirchnerism for

his "passivity" at the head of the ministry

and for his position regarding the operation of Justice in recent years.

With an aggravating circumstance:

between April 2016 and June 2017

, during the government of Mauricio Macri, she was hired by the ministry that she now leads through the "ACARA Automotive framework agreement."

Advises part time.

In full development, according to the hard wing K, of the theory of "lawfare" carried out by judges and chambermaids in collusion with macrismo.

Like Alberto Fernández,

the minister has always had preferential treatment with the judicial family

.

That is, with Comodoro Py and surroundings.

The forcefulness of his sayings on Saturday is surprising, to a great extent, because of that link: he spoke of "judges who agreed and announced their rulings with the then president," and called for "ethics and rectitude."

Losardo not only seeks to appease internal criticism of his figure.

It also seeks to show solidarity with the disturbing relationship that the President begins to weave with the judges and, especially, with the Supreme Court.

Less than a week after Fernández assured that the Court "should carefully and carefully review what happened in the Milagro Sala case" and the highest court confirmed, hours later, the sentence of two years in prison to the Jujuy leader for threats to policemen.

The Secretary of Justice, Juan Martín Mena, responds to Cristina Kirchner and has differences with Losardo.

Until now,

Losardo had remained outside

the successive criticisms of the Instituto Patria a la Justicia, which earned him intense reproaches from the vice president and his main judicial collaborators.

Among them,

Juan Martín Mena

, the secretary of Justice -virtual vice-minister-, with whom he has been going through an intense cold war from the beginning that, according to sources, comes to paralyze the administration.

A complex balance of forces that includes officials such as Gerónimo Ustarroz, representative of the Executive Power in the Council of the Magistracy, another of those who accesses Cristina Kirchner's office without intermediaries and who has as much or more power than the minister.

"There is a veiled inmate there

,

"

says a judge with an office in Comodoro Py who has been visiting Losardo for years.

"It does not have all the power, it is clear. It is our link with the President and executes his orders. He only asks what Alberto wants," reflects, for his part, a first-line federal prosecutor.

It was, for example, one of the main criticisms: that the objective of the President in judicial matters was far from that of Cristina Kirchner.

The minister was dedicated only to the agenda of the first. 

Part of the internal criticism of the management points not only to Losardo but to another trusted official: Irma Adriana García Netto, undersecretary of Relations with the Judicial Power and the Academic Community.

From the Instituto Patria they adduce obstacles to the management.

During the first year in office, Losardo dedicated part of his time to the judicial reform project that he wrote together with the President and other collaborators of the Albertist kidney and that is still shipwrecked in Parliament.

Kirchnerism even detracted from the minister for not convincingly defending the initiative, which the vice president, in one of the letters she made public in the middle of last year, directly unraveled: she said that it was not a structural change, and that Macri had made a reform "de facto".

Alberto Fernández when he took the oath of office from Marcela Losardo.

They are friends and were partners.

Photo Federico López Claro.

It's more.

While the judicial reform was being written in Olivos, a group of leaders and former Justice officials requested a meeting with Cristina Kirchner at the Patria Institute to learn about the initiative.

Restless, they interviewed the vice president to find out the scope of the project.

Among them,

Alejandra Gils Carbó

, former head of prosecutors, run by macrismo. 

The minister did not join the K criticism of Justice throughout 2020.

On the contrary: he surfed the wave.

He did not make his own, for example, the attack against the attorney Eduardo Casal or the changes in the organic law of the Public Ministry, which legislators from the hard wing of the Frente de Todos took on their shoulders.

He reacted now, after the ruling of the Court on Milagro Sala, the transfer of the case for alleged espionage during the Macri government to Comodoro Py and the extension of the complaint from the "macrista judicial table" that a group of deputies presented a few days ago , including

Martín Soria

, with a past in the court of Juan José Galeano.

His statements are now given in a context in which the President begins to see a challenge to his political authority.

But despite the internal criticism, with which he now seeks to begin to ingratiate himself, Losardo, they say, has the position assured.

At least until the President decides.

"

She is Alberto

. She is the only minister who is not going to leave," explains a judge friend.