The election of a new president fractures the Supreme Court of Argentina

The judges of the Supreme Court of Argentina at the opening of the judicial year, on March 19, 2019. Horacio Rosatti, the new president of the court, is first on the right.

The Supreme Court of Argentina, the highest court in the South American country, has changed hands.

The judge Schedule Rosatti will be from next week and for at least three years the new president, replacing Carlos Rosenkrantz.

The selection process has exposed the divisions that exist between the five members of the tribunal.

Rosatti obtained three votes: that of his predecessor, that of another judge and his own.

The other two magistrates expressed their disagreement by absenting themselves from the vote.

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Argentina is experiencing turbulent political times. To the fights that divide the Peronist coalition in the Government, settled last week with changes in Alberto Fernández's Cabinet, the internal differences in the Supreme Court have now been added. Rosatti, the new president, and Rosenkrantz, the outgoing, were put in their place by President Mauricio Macri in 2016. Two years later, in a session called to discuss general issues, an unexpected agreement between the newcomers allowed the removal of the supreme Ricardo Lorenzetti of the presidency. Lorenzetti had been appointed by Néstor Kirchner and had been in office for almost 12 years, where he had remained thanks to extensive management of politics and contacts with the rest of the powers. The new management, in the hands of the newcomer Rosenkrantz, was read as a triumph for Macri.The war, however, would not end there. Lorenzetti sided with Rosatti, the other newcomer, and Maqueda and together they established that any court decision must be collegiate, by at least three votes. Thus they liquefied all the power of the new president.

The election this Thursday was, precisely, collegiate. Lorenzetti tried to return to his post, from which he was considered fired, but given the failure of his efforts, he preferred to absent himself from the vote. He was accompanied by Judge Elena Highton de Nolasco, who at the age of 78 remains in her post thanks to a special permit and owes a lot to Lorenzetti. The soap opera of the Court has as an added condiment the profile of the new president. Rossati comes from politics: from a Peronist cradle, he was Néstor Kirchner's Minister of Justice. He left office a year later, in disagreement with the prices established in a contract for the construction of prisons. Macri saw in him a wayward Kirchnerists and proposed him to the Court, but he soon regretted it. In his book,

The former president said that Rosatti ended up voting against the reforms promoted by his government.

Today neither one nor the other want it.

The formation of the Court is a matter of extreme sensitivity in Argentina, because there, sooner or later, the cases of political corruption end.

That is why politicians take note of internal divisions.

The list to be assumed in this new presidency has at least a dozen particularly sensitive investigations, because they involve Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner or part of her environment.

The judges must now decide on 17 appeals in three cases that the former president considers the result of persecution.

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