It is 1996 and Boris Yeltsin is seeking re-election to the Russian presidency.
The numbers suck.
Communism's one-party system is behind us, but it's still too close.
In a sauna, where he is resting in the middle of a grueling campaign, an adviser named Koriakov approaches Yeltsin and tells him, in front of other witnesses:
"Democracy is fine, but without elections it is safer
. "
It is told by the French writer Emmanuel Carrère in his monumental biography of the Russian writer and politician Eduard Limónov.
The phrase helps to better understand the priority of Kirchnerism before leaving power:
Democracy is fine, but with justice in favor it is safer.
The offensive against the Court - which these days includes Cristina Kirchner's unusual
Operation Victim
in the international arena - is only a desperate reissue of the triad of objectives against justice launched in 2020.
A saga of failures.
Cristina put her entire political and legal team to work on a
judicial reform
(to create more positions that would liquefy the power of Comodoro Py), on a
reform of the Court
(through a commission led by her personal lawyer, Carlos Beraldi) and in the
displacement of the attorney general
(head of the prosecutors), Eduardo Casal, to place someone very close there and prevent cases against Kirchnerism from being promoted.
Three played, three lost.
With two aggravating factors: that of time (now there are only months left for the end of the mandate) and that of the Magistracy -the body that appoints and controls the judges-, which was again directed by the president of the Court, in a scenario that in 2020 the Government did not even foresee.
This
revival
of the onslaught against the Court even has
identical ways
to the attack that took place two years ago against prosecutor Casal, when coordinated accusations began to rain down on him overnight, simultaneously, through "individuals" and NGOs that they accused Casal of the same, with the same arguments and in the same order.
A text whose original seemed to be downloaded from the
FAP (Popular Lawyers Front)
- made up of militants from
La Cámpora
and
Justicia Légitima
- to which the rest of the complainants only made a
copy paste
.
One of those complaints was from the lawyer Natalia Salvo, representing an NGO that
had the Instituto Patria as its headquarters
.
Salvo was the lawyer for the
"retired agricultural producer"
whose testimony was used to set up
Operation Puf
against the bribery notebooks in Dolores.
None of the complaints passed the most elementary filter of common sense and
everything came to nothing.
The
Beraldi Commission
ended up delivering a 64-page report and what the President ended up delivering was to his Minister of Justice, Marcela Losardo, who did not endorse some of the ideas presented there.
Losardo was replaced by Martín Soria, a former mayor of General Roca who, during his municipal administration, withheld a percentage of the salary of the commune officials destined to
"solve the political career of Dr. Soria
. "
In other words,
his own
.
Soria arrived to fight at the Court but lost the cape in the first bullfight.
During his tenure, the Court entered the Magistracy and ruled on key rulings against the wishes of the Government, such as the restitution of the co-participation percentage that had been taken from the City of Buenos Aires to give it to the Province.
Now, the Commission for Political Trial in Deputies accumulates files to begin discussing the process for the four judges of the Court from this Thursday.
They already added 12, but there could be more.
As before with Casal, there are initiatives from "individuals" and NGOs.
And who are the complainants?
A
"private citizen"
who comes forward to denounce the Court in Deputies is ultra-k senator Juliana Di Tullio, who used that figure because she is not a deputy.
And there is also the
"Demand"
association , which in 2021 had denounced an alleged "secret operation" between the then president of the Court Carlos Rosenkrantz and former president Macri to keep Judge Elena Highton de Nolasco in office beyond the 75 years.
Never happened.
Highton resigned and the vacancy remains vacant: the government
failed even to name his replacement.
Another of the current complainants against the Court is the
AAJ (Argentine Association of Jurists)
which campaigns for the release of Milagro Sala in Jujuy and is directed by Claudia Rocca, a lawyer who during the pandemic gave zoom talks on
lawfare
with the deputy and former spy ultra k Rodolfo Tailhade.
Among all the attacks, Cristina was sentenced to 6 years in prison for corruption in public works and still has pending decisions in Cassation about whether she should go to trial for
Hotesur-Los Sauces
and the
Pact with Iran
, one of the causes to which that fears it the most because of its
international repercussion.
In the final onslaught of
Operation Victim
- Justice will be used as the main rival for Kirchnerism in this electoral year -, the Government presented a complaint on Monday at the UN about
violation of human rights
that would consist of
judging Cristina for the crimes that are imputed to him,
in transparent processes and before the courts of democracy, as befits any ordinary citizen.
This simple exercise in republican maturity - that justice acts as it should - makes democracy insecure for Cristina and her allies, who feel that there are things they cannot handle (such as adverse rulings) and draws them the unbearable horizon of the unforeseen.
Three hours after the unusual Argentine presentation, the UN Human Rights Council published its return.
Among rigorous recommendations, it expressly requests that Argentina
"ensure the full independence of the Judiciary and the Attorney General."
A worldwide defeat for
Operation Victim
.
look too
After Horacio Pietragalla's claim, the UN asked Argentina to respect the "independence" of Justice
look too
Alberto Fernández and Lula criticized the "lawfare" and defended the regimes of Venezuela and Cuba