A few years ago, Alberto Fernández vociferously defended the independence of the federal judiciary.
Today, he makes every effort in his power to sully her.
What happened in the interim for such a Copernican turn to take place?
It's hard to really know.
But it is not a minor fact that Cristina Kirchner (today, her vice president) was anointed candidate for president, who, along with other former officials of her government, was (and is) involved in criminal cases in the federal Justice.
In this new version of himself, already being President of the Nation, he tried to double the federal Criminal Justice in the Capital (where cases of corruption of public officials are litigated).
His attempt, as was reasonable for it to happen, failed.
At the same time, he formed a commission to advise him on the functioning of the Supreme Court.
The commission was chaired by whoever it was and is the lawyer of the Vice President, Dr. Carlos Beraldi.
At the time, the varied and not very unanimous conclusions of that commission had no consequences.
Now, on the one hand, the President authorized extraordinary sessions of Congress to deal with his party's project on the expansion of the Supreme Court, which already has half a legislative sanction.
On the other, he instructed his deputies to present the impeachment request to the members of the Supreme Court, which they did.
The project to reform the high court, expanding it from 5 to 15 members (originally there were 25) is a leap into the void: the Supreme Court was never made up of 15 members.
When it was expanded to nine in the '90s, the Court did not gain in science or efficiency and its independence was severely questioned.
It ended with a political trial of some of its members.
But let's remember some other more edifying background.
The Supreme Court is the highest federal court in the country and one of its functions is to be the final interpreter of many constitutional issues of great importance.
It is key that it is and is perceived by the majority of the population as an impartial body, beyond the criticism that may surely be formulated.
Originally, Law 48, which regulated its integration and operation, did not represent a factional vision on the part of Congress, but was the result of a great agreement reached between the main political forces of the country based on a bill that the law itself had prepared. Supreme Court.
In 1864, two months after its installation, the Court invalidated a Miter decree and some time later did the same with another of its measures.
Miter did not discuss those decisions;
It did not occur to him to attribute these results to the fact that the members of the Court that he had selected from among prominent jurists sympathetic to the political forces opposed to his own had acted with partiality or favoring unholy interests (and keep in mind that at that time they did not spare epithets in politics).
On the contrary, in both situations, the first magistrate of the nation, setting the example, acted as the Court indicated that it should be done.
The impartiality of the Court was not questioned and thus public confidence in the Court was consolidated.
Currently we find ourselves in the opposite situation: on numerous occasions the President or members of his party have insulted the judges of the high court;
The presidential initiative to expand the Court is the result of the exclusive will of the ruling party, it was not agreed with the opposition forces and the opinion of the Supreme Court was not requested.
This project was later modified in part in the Senate, by members of his own party and was approved by 36 votes, against 33.
It is evident then that, faced with a similar situation, Fernández does not follow the good example of Miter or that of the politicians of that time.
He's not even deterred by the fact that three of the four current members of the Court come from the ranks of his own party.
This background and the resistance of the majority of the opposition cadre should persuade him.
Pretending to raise the number of members of the Court from 5 to 15, as proposed, is nonsense.
Raising the number has operational, legislative and political consequences.
The reform does not seek to correct operating defects, taking advantage of past experiences and the opinion of lawyers who have been in charge of studying these issues.
Not.
It is pursued, on the one hand, to get rid of the current Court, since it has shown signs of independence that the Government does not tolerate.
On the other hand, to create in its place a new type of court that, if achieved, will know in what judicial pantomime it triggers.
It is expected that this new court would include the four current ministers.
But, if the request for impeachment that a group of pro-government deputies has carried out in parallel were to prosper, what they would actually be pursuing is to fully establish a new Supreme Court, tripled in its current size.
Launched to this objective, they seem to be willing to use any available resource.
Our society has generated enough antibodies to withstand this onslaught.
but the Government must reconsider and warn that with permanent confrontation it will only achieve greater confrontation and, it goes without saying, living in such anxiety (even if the environment tells it otherwise) does no good for anyone and feeds ungovernable hostile feelings in their own and strangers who urgently need to be appeased, before it's too late.
Alberto F. Garay is a constitutional lawyer