If the hot mercury that reflects the rise in the dollar, the escalation of that powerful social solvent that is inflation or the passage from palace intrigues to an open exchange of smacks in the government were not enough to discourage Argentines, in another power of the State the cannons of a new war exploded:
the Supreme Court of Justice ended this Thursday with the unstable internal balance
that seemed to have moderated the tensions between its members.
The decision to "reorganize" the General Secretariat for Administration of the Court and send its until now head, the accountant
Héctor Marchi
to an evident judicial Siberia in the Chamber of Social Security, dynamited the fragile bridges between the stable majority of the court, made up of
Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Juan Carlos Maqueda
, and their colleague and Marchi's godfather,
Ricardo Lorenzetti.
The
casus belli
that highlighted the crisis this Thursday was the removal of Marchi, which had actually
been decided on March 29,
when the plan for the restructuring of his office reached Lorenzetti's office with the signature of his three colleagues.
The topic was settled
.
But it was not made public until the former president of the Court stamped his, accompanying the majority vote or expressing his dissent, as finally happened this week.
Things happened in between.
To understand the two planes in which the combat takes place, it is necessary to separate them, as René Descartes suggested.
The legal arguments that the two parties raised this Thursday are as plausible as they are relative, but they reveal the degree of internal decomposition of the Supreme Court.
Lorenzetti was scandalized by the reorganization of the Administration Secretariat and the rocket into space in which Marchi was embarked.
He wrote and made it clear that it affects the legal and social prestige of the Court, and the coherence in the decisions of the highest court, because it modifies the structure decided in 2015 by Maqueda, Lorenzetti and Highton, "generating instability in the institutions
"
.
In addition, the judge reasons, "
public spending is increased in the face of a population that must restrict theirs
. "
In his environment, for example, "unnecessary secretariats" such as Institutional Development, which would spend 150 million pesos per year on personnel alone, were signed up.
Under the poncho of those explanations, the steel of the sharpest knife shone in this fight of power.
Lorenzetti attributed Marchi's displacement to
"a sanction under the report presented on the Obra Socia del Poder Judicial that does not seem to be liked."
Let's write this down.
Before Thursday afternoon fell, and with all the formal resolutions signed, the response to that missile arrived.
In the environment of the other three ministers they denied that there was "a concealed sanction" to Marchi, they warned that the reorganization of the dependencies of the Court is a faculty of its members enshrined in article 113 of the Constitution, they recalled a similar transfer signed by Lorenzetti in 2007, denied that an organizational and administrative decision harms the doctrine of precedent and the stability of judicial resolutions, denied that the transfer of the former administrator to the Social Security Chamber increases fiscal spending - there are numerous vacant positions with an approved budget ,
A quagmire.
Pacts with the government?
The Marchi
affair
uncovered a pressure cooker that had been heating up since last year, when the government began the process of impeachment against all the ministers of the Court whose hearings in the Commission of Deputies take place week after week without much attention from anyone. , because everything is destined for garbage since the ruling party does not have the necessary votes to approve the trial in the compound.
Proportional to the public disinterest in what is perceived as little more than a media operation, from the Court each hearing is followed with a magnifying glass, ghosts are stirred, theories are woven and conclusions are written.
Two of them: up to now, all the officials of the highest court summoned as witnesses before the Commission belong to the Rosatti, Rosenkrantz and Maqueda committees.
They didn't call anyone from Lorenzetti.
Another: although this week it was planned to continue analyzing the ruling of the Court that ordered the return of federal co-participation money to the city of Buenos Aires, the agenda was suddenly changed to move forward with another of the causes of the process against the ministers;
the alleged irregularities in the management of the Obra Social del Poder Judicial.
Here we return to the suspended point a few paragraphs above.
In the majority of the Court it is taken for granted that these suspicions are manipulated by Dr. Lorenzetti
to "take revenge for what he considers a personal betrayal on the part of Juan Carlos Maqueda", the now dean of the court and his historical ally, who for two years he accompanies Rosatti and Rosenkrantz in the "new majority".
As part of the internal distribution of tasks, Maqueda was the minister in charge of social work, which began to be the subject of complaints that were later dismissed by the prosecutor Stornelli, although suggestively never filed by Judge Ariel Lijo
.
A magistrate with solid ties to Lorenzetti.
If this story were written by Cristina Kirchner, her crutch would fit: "
Some facts do not help to dispel the specters.
One day before his ejection, the accountant Marchi presented a spicy report on the social work of the judicial officers, which Lorenzetti said he "did not seem to like."
His internal adversaries remind him that the changes in the Secretariat of Administration had been decided two weeks before, and that Marchi's move -like others- happened while he kept foot on that resolution without expressing his vote.
That is not all: they also say that
this report is not even new
, but from November 10, 2022. And that this week he only complied with the order that the majority of the Court had given him to accompany all the documentation requested by the Commission on Political Trial on April 12, linked to Obra Social.
The suggestive coincidences continued this Friday
.
Around noon and with an interval of a few minutes between one and the other, three communications arrived at Corte.
The first two came from the Political Judgment Commission of Deputies.
The first requires that the "Marchi report", whose delivery had a deadline of April 26, reach
Congress within 24 hours
.
The second
quotes Marchi as a witness for next Tuesday.
The other requirement came from Comodoro Py, to request internal files linked to the social work of the judicial officers.
Who signs it?
Judge Lijo.
Let's take another step.
Although unknown, the resolution that he ousted Marchi was signed by the majority on March 29.
A day later, the accountant filed a recusal - request for removal - against Rosatti, Rosenkrantz and Maqueda in a civil trial that he filed against
Elisa Carrió
for her repeated accusations of alleged corruption in the Court together with Lorenzetti, on the grounds that
all of them are under impeachment in Congress.
The ministers rejected that request in 24 hours as untimely, which caused criticism from the Rafael jurist.
And here we come to the knot of the crossed accusations.
In various offices of the Court there is the presumption that
this disqualification of Marchi is nothing more than a Trojan horse devised by Lorenzetti
in coordination with a sector of the government or Kirchnerism for other purposes: if the judges accepted to be separated in this case because The legislative ruling party wants his impeachment,
they should also do so,
for example, in the merits file for the Buenos Aires co-participation or, later,
when it is their turn to analyze the conviction of Cristina in the Road case.
But on the other side there are also suspicions.
Close to Lorenzetti, they deny any link between the crisis this week and the trial that Marchi made against Carrió, and they fear that the restructuring of the Secretary of Administration and the dismissal of the accountant will loosen vigilance on the anti-cyclical fund of the Court created
and
watered during his presidency, in which more than 30,000 million pesos are now kept.
From Cristina's government, Kirchnerism wants that box that until now could not violate.
"There is a great upheaval around this, where
a sector of the government is also involved.
who wants those funds and thus weaken the Court.
It is necessary to warn about this so as not to confuse the population and especially the Judiciary.
There is a lot of restlessness", they worry in Lorenzetti's vocals.
Next week, the scene of this scandal will move to Congress.
It will be convenient to return attention to the boring impeachment hearings of the Court: not because of their threat to the stability of the ministers, but as a reflection of the latest news of their shipwreck.
look too
Political trial of the Court: Kirchnerism pressured the witnesses but failed to get them to confirm irregularities in the social work of the judicial officers
look too
The suggestive points in common in the cases of illegal spying on judges and politicians