Cristina Kirchner confirmed that she will not be a candidate in this year's elections. In the extensive letter she published on Tuesday, she accused the justice system of seeking to proscribe her through the processes she faces for acts of corruption. He referred to an alleged "persecution" that he suffered since 2016 "in his own flesh" and with his family. In the run-up of any electoral contest, there is a calendar that the vice president is watching closely: that ofthe decisions that Comodoro Py and the Court must make about their judicial situation.
On December 6, when the Federal Oral Court 2 (TOF 2) condemned her for fraudulent administration to the detriment of the State, Cristina responded with a disclaimer where she anticipated that she would not be a candidate for anything. Kirchnerism has since speculated on the possibility of that decision being reversed. But this Monday it was confirmed: he will not run for any office.
In her letter she made a marked reference to the judicial situation that, far from appeasement, the vice president knows that key decisions await her and pointed – once again – in advance to that possible scenario.
"Exponents of the Judicial Party would dictate against me and whose condemnatory result I publicly announced three years before when the trial known as the public work of National Roads began. The conviction and disqualification in that case has a single political and electoral translation: the ban," he wrote on Tuesday.
The truth is that disqualification from holding public office for life is an accessory penalty to the crime of fraudulent administration. It was considered that the vice-president interposed the personal interests to the detriment of the public administration whose responsibility was to protect them and, forgive the redundancy, to administer them correctly.
However, the conviction is not automatically implemented: it is required to be ratified by the Supreme Court of Justice. In order for it to reach that instance, the review of the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber is still lacking.
Hearings after August
The appeals of the Vialidad case, including that of Cristina Kirchner, entered a week ago to the Chamber IV of the Chamber of Cassation. Ahead is an extensive tour of administrative procedures: there are issues to resolve and then set a date for hearings to the accused to expand the arguments of their appeals.
That instance includes prosecutor Diego Luciani, who insisted that the former presidentshould also be charged with the crime of illicit association as a boss. The chambers have not yet set the schedule of hearings, but even if they begin in the second stage of the year, there will in no way be a pronouncement on the TOF 2 ruling until 2024.
That first date is observed by the vice president, because once the criteria of the judges of the Cassation are known - if they confirm the conviction, if they modify or revoke it - the road to the Court will begin.
Cristina Kirchner referred to this point and said that if she was a candidate, the Court would quickly confirm the sentence against her to disqualify her from exercising the position for which she could have run. "Just as three people did it with the provinces of Tucumán and San Juan, have no doubt that they will do it against me in order to prevent Peronism from participating in the democratic process, or weaken it, leading us to a dead end."
The highest court does not have deadlines to rule on the issues that come to that instance. But the vice president used it as an argument to give up a candidacy.
The judicial calendar to which he pays attention has other dates.
A key session in the Senate
On May 30, the Senate will hold the mandatory hearing to approve the five-year extension of the list of Judge Ana María Figueroa, current president of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation who in August celebrates the 75 years that the Constitution imposes as a limit for judges to continue in their positions unless the Senate renews that list for five years. That is what the government is looking for.
Hotesur and Pact with Iran: before June 24?
Figueroa is a key judge because in her hands are two resolutions that matter to Cristina Kirchner and that would be known in the coming weeks, that is, before the closing of lists that is June 24.
On the one hand, with the deadlines completely expired, he has to send his peers in Chamber I, Daniel Petrone and Diego Barroetaveña, his vote regarding the Hotesur and Los Sauces cases, the two companies of the Kirchner family investigated for money laundering.
In these cases, the vice president, like her children, obtained a dismissal without conducting the trial. Chamber I of Cassation has to decide whether to uphold that criterion or reopen the case and the oral argument is held. Only Judge Figueroa's vote is missing.
If the case is reopened, thevice president and his children could end up next year sitting in the dock of the accused, along with the other defendants who include his niece Romina Mercado, his former business partner Lázaro Báez, a key man in the family business such as Osvaldo Sanfelice, his former tenant Cristóbal López, to his former accountant and repentant in the cause of the Notebooks, Víctor Manzanares.
The same circumstance is transited with the case Pact with Iran, which began with the complaint of the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman and where Cristina Kirchner was prosecuted and sent to trial for the crime of aggravated cover-up of the attack on the headquarters of the AMIA. With a dismissal without trial, the judges themselves must decide whether or not to reopen the case.
Another trial for alleged corruption
What other key date awaits the vice? The one established by the Federal Oral Court 7 (TOF 7) to initiate the oral debate in the case of the Notebooks of the Bribes. Cristina Kirchner is accused as the head of an illicit association that was dedicated to the collection of bribes from state contractors.
The case, raised to oral trial three years ago, has a greater progress. Judicial sources assured Clarín that the next decision is to choose which pre-trial evidentiary measures will be carried out, which witnesses will be accepted and, finally, to choose the start date.
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The decline of Cristina Kirchner and two numbers that terrify Sergio Massa
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