The President in Mar del Plata, where he would stay for a few days/twitter
Following the official announcement by his government that it will convene extraordinary sessions in Congress to move forward with the impeachment trial against the Supreme Court of Justice, President Alberto Fernández redoubled his verbal offensive against the Judiciary yesterday: he affirmed that in Argentina “the only privileged are the judges”.
The area in which he spoke with the subject had nothing to do with it. Fernández took advantage of an incursion in Mar del Plata regarding the extension of the Universal Child Allowance (AUH) to children without parental care. The exact sentence was: “Evita lived in a country where the only privileged ones were the children and today we are in a country where the only privileged ones are the judges”. A very rare roll. Before she had said: “Since we were little we listened and learned that where there is a need there is a right, despite what some judge says.”
Fernández has taken the lead in the offensive to grind down the Supreme Court, a battle driven by hardline Kirchnerism for a long time. It is worth remembering last year’s project promoted by Vice President Cristina Kirchner for magistrates to pay profits. It did not pass the filter of Deputies.
other goals?
It is almost impossible for the impeachment of the ministers of the Court to prosper in Congress because the ruling party does not have the necessary numbers in the chambers, but the strategy would be to advance as much as possible in the Committee on Impeachment of Deputies to expose the magistrates there and, on the other hand, to unleash this type of verbal offensive that the militant troops repeat all the time. Sow doubts, raise supposed preferences. Like that finally lost wrestling for the judges to pay Profits, where there was also talk of privileges.
The President, who before taking office had promised to “let the Court work”, painted his face on this issue after the ruling of the highest Court that ordered his Government to return to the City of Buenos Aires a percentage of the funds that had removed during the pandemic, unilaterally, to give it to the Province of Buenos Aires. Those were times when Axel Kicillof was facing a kind of police uprising over salary issues and he had no money to face the claim.
Alberto first threatened not to comply with the ruling, generating rejection within his own cabinet, and then he proposed to pay the difference in those resources in bonds. Something flatly rejected by the victim of that scythe: the head of the Buenos Aires Government, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. Thus, Fernández brought together certain governors related to the Casa Rosada and managed to issue a document -signed by 14 leaders- questioning the resolution of Justice.
However, the onslaught against the Court continued: first requesting the impeachment trial against the president of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, and then extending it to the rest of the magistrates. That step, however, had the support of 11 Peronist governors, some less than the number that had formed that critical statement.
What Fernández has been criticized for a lot is that he has used as one of the engines of his questions to Rosatti some chats obtained illegally from the telephone of a judge’s secretary, which would not have any legal validity in a court because they are flawed in their source. In other words, wiretaps that were not ordered by any magistrate but provided by some shady espionage system linked to the State.
In its desperation to start the process in Congress, the government managed to get a federal judge to accept these illegal wiretaps in the form of a complaint to request the kidnapping of Rosatti’s collaborator’s phone. It is the judge of Santiago del Estero Guillermo Molinari.
It is not surprising: the head honcho of that province, Gerardo Zamora, who is related to that judge through his wife, Senator Claudia Ledesma Abdala, is one of the most bitter governors against the Court ruling that benefited the CABA and He is the one who filed the complaint about the cell phone. Which, by the way, could not be carried out because Rosatti’s collaborator is abroad. Zamora is also a great bishop for Cristina Kirchner, of whom no one doubts that he is behind the whole move or at least endorses it. Molinari, in the end, had to declare himself incompetent yesterday and left the case in the hands of his Buenos Aires colleague, Ariel Lijo, who handles a file with a similar subject.
The silence of the court
The Supreme Court has not expressed itself so far displaying its style: a lot of patience and speaking through its rulings.
