Javier Milei has promoted his career towards power by installing a new contradiction in Argentina.
For more than three decades the country was polarized between Kirchnerism and anti-Kirchnerism.
Milei designed a new classification that, to some extent, unifies these two actors: the conflict is between the “caste”, that is, the elite, and the common people, who he moralizes as “good Argentines.”
The “caste” is an oligarchy at the center of which is the political class, whose main feature is to be parasitic on the public budget.
It is the incarnation of that monster that for Milei is the State.
That is why to combat it we must adjust public accounts and deregulate the economy.
This explanation has provoked a fairly strong current of support for the leader of La Libertad Avanza.
It's understandable.
Milei joined political activity at a time of unrest rarely seen, originating from a long economic crisis that made widespread corruption, which presents features of chronicity, more intolerable.
The libertarian leader addressed the problem with a typical populist resource: asserting himself in that bad mood to redirect it towards the leadership.
This operation adopted different scenarios.
The most common, in the path of Trump or Bolsonaro, is the repudiation of Congress.
Milei inaugurated his presidency with a speech with his back to parliament.
And he went to that palace to open the ordinary sessions with a presentation in which he treated deputies and senators like a gang of thieves.
Immorality has economic roots in its explanation: the State would be a criminal organization destined to defraud and oppress citizens.
Against this decadent landscape, he presents himself as a regenerator.
Someone who calls to stop the decline to start a new cycle.
Against this backdrop an inexplicable message was cut out last Wednesday.
From the Casa Rosada, the headquarters of the Executive Branch, they announced that, to fill the two vacancies that exist in the Supreme Court of Justice, the highest court in the country, lawyer Manuel García-Mansilla and judge Ariel Lijo would be nominated.
The scandal broke out over Lijo's promotion.
It is very difficult to find a magistrate who more expressively symbolizes the corruption rooted in the federal criminal jurisdiction, especially that of the Federal Capital.
The judges in charge of investigating and punishing drug trafficking, smuggling, terrorism and, above all, the irregularities of national officials sit there.
Anyone who studies the spread of corruption in Argentina in recent decades will notice that one of the factors that drives it is the absence of penalties.
And that this absence is linked to a group of judges and prosecutors who, rather than doing justice, provide impunity.
The “Comodoro Py” courts, as they are called after the Buenos Aires avenue where they are located, have long been seen as a swamp.
Many of the magistrates who serve in them lead a life of magnates that is impossible to explain with the salary of a public servant.
Lijo stands out among them all.
But that doesn't mean he had to give too many explanations.
At the time he had to face an investigation into the very suspicious movements of his brother Alfredo “Freddy” Lijo.
This lawyer usually presents himself as a “judicial operator,” that is, someone who traffics influence between defendants and judges.
A case was opened against “Freddy” in the same federal court in which his brother serves.
But he was acquitted, as were several of his associates, without even being investigated.
The lightness of the procedure was striking because the investigators had reports that recorded the existence of suspicious accounts in Spain and Switzerland through which millions of dollars passed.
In addition to loans without repayment by companies belonging to defendants in federal courts.
“Freddy” Lijo, the brother of the judge promoted by Milei, declared black money in the tax laundering offered by the government of Mauricio Macri in 2016. Through the numerous shell companies of which he has been the owner, the judicial lobbyist Lijo bought cars high-end and benefited his brother, Judge Lijo, with authorizations so that he could handle them.
Among others, a Mercedes Benz E-350.
The worst moment for the Lijos in their adventures occurred when the Judicial Council investigated another federal judge, the chambermaid Eduardo Freiler, who was displaced for not being able to explain his patrimonial development.
In that investigation it appeared that Freiler was a partner of “Freddy” Lijo's ex-wife, Carla Lago, in a mining company.
When Mrs. Lago was invited to testify, she revealed that her former husband was Freiler's partner in a racehorse breeding farm called La Generación.
And that Judge Ariel Lijo, she understood, was also part of that undertaking.
A credible fact because Judge Lijo and his brother “Freddy” were portrayed by the specialized press receiving awards at some racetrack.
Lago also stated that her ex-husband used to bring bags of money to the judge, her brother.
This wealth of information was buried, and almost forgotten, when pressure was exerted from the Macri government to save Judge Lijo.
The messenger would have been Daniel Angelici, known as “el Tano”, a gambling businessman and former president of Boca Jr., another judicial lobbyist linked to the former president.
It is a widespread interpretation that this management was due to the fact that the Lijo court is investigating the alleged emptying of the Correo Argentino company, which had belonged to the Macri family.
But they are hypotheses, of course.
To abort the Council's investigation, it was essential for Lago to say that his statements had been invented.
He did it.
The proposal to make Lijo a minister of the country's highest court has a main promoter.
It is the judge of that same court, Ricardo Lorenzetti.
The version that transcends the Executive Branch is that Lorenzetti would have convinced Milei that with Lijo he could balance the majority formed by Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Juan Carlos Maqueda.
This negotiation is a small license to the principle of division of powers, sacred to any ultraliberal government, like Milei's.
Lorenzetti is waging a bitter war against his three colleagues on the Court.
Two of these magistrates, Rosenkrantz and Maqueda, are convinced that, as part of this confrontation, their colleague has promoted several criminal cases against them, through complaints from third parties.
These cases are processed, to add curiosity to this intrigue, in the Lijo court.
To appoint the two candidates for judges, the Senate must approve the specifications with two-thirds of the votes of its members present.
It is impossible to obtain that majority without the support of Cristina Kirchner.
In other words: leaders who are at the opposite ends of the spectrum should coincide.
A left-wing Peronist like her, and a far-right libertarian like Milei.
For the former president and the legislators who align with her, Lijo's nomination is uncomfortable.
Not so much for moral reasons.
The discomfort is due to the fact that she is the candidate who must fill the void left by a woman, Elena Highton de Nolasco, who left the Court because she reached the 75 years of age that the Constitution sets as the limit for permanence.
Voting for Lijo would be betraying the flag of gender equality, which Kirchnerism has always revered.
Another license would be needed here.
The other candidate, García-Mansilla, complicates the move more.
Prestigious in the academic field, this constitutional lawyer expresses very conservative ideas in the moral field.
Many see a sign of that position in his role as dean of the Faculty of Law at the Universidad Austral, close to Opus Dei.
In any case, García-Mansilla's postulation is corroded by a drop of doubt.
He should replace Judge Juan Carlos Maqueda, who retires at the end of the year.
Someone will fulfill a commitment made these days on that date.
The shape of politics changes in Argentina with the speed and stealth with which the shapes of the clouds change.
If García-Mansilla does not enter the Court, but Lijo does, a court would be blocked two against two.
Maybe it's a good scheme for Milei's needs.
The claim that the dark Lijo is a judge of the Court is an undeniable inconsistency on Milei's part.
The first of great dimension.
Perhaps the mistake of someone who has not yet understood that, if there is a political caste formed around corporate interests, it is because there is another caste that offers protection: the judicial caste.
Lijo is the emblem of that corporation that provides impunity.
It is not the only inconsistency.
It is striking that a government that relativizes the atrocities of the last military dictatorship agreed to the integration of the highest court with a judge like Lorenzetti, who was the most active when it came to reopening the judicial cases that weighed on the perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
More licenses.
The move also represents a political inconvenience.
Milei is seeking a political-electoral alliance with Pro, Mauricio Macri's party.
But it is almost impossible for Macri to justify Milei's arrangement with Lorenzetti to his base.
Even though there are those who tempt him in the desert, saying that if he approves Lijo's candidacy, Lijo would acquit him in that case of the Post Office.
Milei's curious destiny.
By accepting Judge Lorenzetti's proposal, he unified, for different motivations, almost the entire political leadership.
That is to say, he corroborated the existence of the caste with an unparalleled display.
With a cost: immersing yourself in it.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Keep reading
I am already a subscriber
_