This was anticipated by Germán Martínez, head of the block of the Frente de Todos in Deputies and explained how a request for impeachment is treated
For iProfessional
01/07/2023 – 9:53 p.m.
After the Government decided to include the impeachment project against the Supreme Court in the extraordinary sessions that it called for the second half of January, the head of the Frente de Todos (FdT) bloc in the Chamber of Deputies Germán Martínez confirmed in the last hours that from their space they analyze to summon the members of the highest court of justice to Congress.
“How are we going to rule it out, if they are the defendants?” said the pro-government leader in a radio interview in which he also referred to the request made by President Alberto Fernández to the legislators and on the axes of the accusation.
This is the treatment of the request for impeachment in the Lower House
Faced with this possibility that he raised, Martínez explained how a request for impeachment is treated in the Lower House. “In the first stage, a formal analysis of the conditions that support the impeachment is made and a summary is opened. Then comes the evidentiary stage, where one tries to gather as many elements as possible to support the accusation. There you can obviously ask the presence of those who are accused. Therefore, that is under analysis.”
And he continued: “We are going to invite everyone we have to invite. We think that the issue has enormous institutional significance. There have been systematic incursions by the Court into powers that belong to the Judiciary and the Executive Power. We are talking about institutional aspects that affect democracy as a whole, whether the FdT governs or another political space”.
In this context, Martínez also provided details about the meeting he had with Fernández regarding the treatment of the initiative. “First, the President asked us that the request made by him and by the governors of the provinces can have parliamentary processing. This implies the necessary administrative channeling so that we can have the conditions to deal with it in the Impeachment Committee and that we can initiate the process there. process requested by the President and by the governors”.
“We believe that it is an absolutely fair and reasonable request,” Martínez said.
He then recounted that “he asked us to be very argumentative, to justify everything, to give the process a lot of institutional seriousness and to try to make it a space with many arguments and few chicanas (…) He also recommended absolute adherence not only to what the regulations of the Chamber, but of the Impeachment Committee”.
Consulted with the small number of pro-government deputies for the approval of the request, Martínez evaluated: “We work so that it can have approval in the field of the commission and also in the compound. Except in 2015, when there was an attempted impeachment against the court judge [Carlos] Fayt, we have to go back to 2003 or 2004 to find a scenario similar to the one we are experiencing today with the Supreme Court of Justice. At that time there were also doubts about the ability of the then president [Néstor] Kirchner to generate the necessary majorities to be able to move forward, for example, with the political trial against Moliné O’Connor. So we’re going to work for that.”
“We believe that it is an absolutely fair and reasonable request. All the condiments and objective and subjective conditions are met so that progress can be made in the impeachment trial,” the deputy concluded.
