Federico Mayol
04/20/2021 3:31 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 04/20/2021 3:31 PM
Front-line officials of the national government and the Buenos Aires administration will meet for the first time this Wednesday in
the Supreme Court
in the dispute over the
cut of co-participation funds
that
Alberto Fernández
gave
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta
in the second half of 2020 , and for which until now the City has stopped receiving
an amount around $ 32,000 million.
The conciliation hearing, a formality foreseen by the Court once the jurisdictions initiate their claims, is scheduled for 11 a.m. at the Palace. And it occurs in the midst of the growing tension between Fernández and Rodríguez Larreta that reached its peak during the last weekend, after room IV of the Buenos Aires litigation and tax appeals chamber decided to ignore the national DNU and endorse the continuity of face-to-face classes in the City.
A break in the bond between the President and the head of government that is difficult to trace: for the Casa Rosada, it was simply a Forum Shopping maneuver orchestrated by the top of the local administration. The vote of the chambermaid María de las Nieves Macchiavelli, sister of a leader of Rodríguez Larreta's kidney -who arrived at that place after an agreement between the PRO and the PJ in the Council of the Magistracy first, and in the Legislature later-, it is, for the Government, only part of the film.
In this context, three officials from the City and three from the national government will sit down this Wednesday in front of a secretary of the highest court to argue their positions.
The attorney Gabriel Astarloa; the Minister of Finance, Martín Mura, and the Secretary of Security, Marcelo D'Alessandro,
on the side of the Buenos Aires administration.
And officials of the Treasury Department, headed by Carlos Zannini,
on the side of the Nation.
Rodríguez Larreta had appeared in Court last September with a precautionary and unconstitutionality claim after Fernández's decision to prune the co-participatory funds that the City receives from the national State and that Mauricio Macri increased as soon as he assumed by decree -of 1.4 % to 3.75%, then dropped to 3.5% - due to the transfer of the Federal Police to the local orbit.
For the Government, this increase was disproportionate.
In fact,
Congress later passed a law that set the City's police operation at around $ 24.5 billion,
a third of what was justified by Rodríguez Larreta's legal advisers in the lawsuit filed in Court.
After the enactment of the law, last December, a "negotiation table" was opened for 60 business days that, in fact, did not have a single meeting.
The Court, then, set the first hearing for this Wednesday.
That is, the first face to face in the highest judicial instance of the country.
As this newspaper published, that of the coparticipation is not the only proposal by which the Court will have to resolve the dispute between the City and the Nation.
In addition to school attendance, the Casa Rosada appeared in the highest court for the millionaire assignment of Macri's land to the head of government during his Presidency, and the Banco Nación did the same for the tax that Rodríguez Larreta applied to operations with Leliqs .
Until that moment, the relationship between Fernández and the head of the Government had been more than harmonious in the management of the pandemic.
So much so that the President even introduced him as his "friend" during an official ceremony.
The pressure of the extremes made the link tighten first, and then break.
It is there, when politics fails, where the Court begins to play its game.
