And hit the court

Cristina’s recent open letter, which like everything she communicates has an impact on the national order, removes (whether she likes it or not) an issue of vital importance to our country and our democracy: the links perverts of media power with the judiciary.

On the occasion of the government’s first anniversary, the letter raises countless questions about issues of concern to the Nation on many levels. In the first place, and although elliptically, he seems to be addressing Alberto Fernández, his partner in the construction and management of the FdT and today the first president. It is the partner and it is the sister who writes and with all the delicacy, but without leaving anything in the inkwell, she tells the brother that certain measures are not working, at least for the most part. As the judiciary can be improved by corporate vocation, today an impossible dream. This is why he suggests, with respect and clarity, that the self-cleaning of the Supreme Court of Justice is unlikely in such a closed, elitist and prebendary society.

President Alberto undoubtedly also knows that waiting for deep and sincere changes is utopian, because he must know that if changes do not occur, nothing will stop the abuses of the so-called law, which is nothing. other than the illicit association between the media of (in) the dominant communication and the most corrupt layers of the judiciary. However, it seems highly unlikely that Alberto will promote political trials or make extreme decisions. By style and because he is also a law scholar and knows his business inside out. This suggests that the law on judicial reform will continue in hibernation. Cristina knows this and that is why she resorts to open letters, so that the company finds out and understands the essence of the situation.

It is obvious, and there is nothing wrong with admitting it, that our government is not a Kirchner government. And it is obvious that Those who have it most clearly are precisely the president and the vice-president. And it is good that it is so.

And to say and be clear about the above is nothing more than a political way of understanding the decisions and indecisions due to the government being harassed by an infamous and backward communication system which is much worse than a political opposition. And at the same time, in the judicial world, predominates a penal system which, for decades, has co-opted and assaulted, deceived and abused, and whose fundamental base of support has historically been the supreme courts of justice from the very beginning. of the oligarchic republic that it founded. Bartolomé Miter of September 1861 after a triumph by chance at the battle of Pavón. In command of the forces of Buenos Aires, he defeated the army of the Argentine Confederation commanded by Justo José de Urquiza, who unexpectedly, and although he had a numerical superiority, withdrew his troops and sealed a defeat that the whole country is still suffering, although he ignores it.

It was only then that the real history of the Supreme Court began, which after the Constitution of 1853 had never been able to meet. He did not do so until 10 years later, in 1863, and your first decision was limited to the rejection of a complaint due to formal defects… All a sign for the future.

Since then, the history of the Court has been a constant source of conflict, injustice and political submission. An embarrassment of more than a century and a half to which the open letter from the vice-president clearly alludes. Which is not new, but rather a historical continuity since Miter ordered that the number of judges be fixed by Congress, which decided that there should be 5 and not 9 magistrates as indicated in the Constitution of 1853. A number that lasted almost a century, until in 1960, Arturo Frondizi increased it to 7; six years later, dictator Juan Carlos Onganía returned them to 5; in 1990 Carlos Menem decided that the best 9; and in 2006 with Néstor Kirchner he returned to 5. As before.

But the question was never only digital but of class, since Argentina began to be an elitist and oligarchic republic, without elections or popular participation, and dedicated since Pavón to build an extraordinary city that the world would admire, but at the cost of an immense country whose permanent sign was delay. Much like another president, Julio Argentino Roca, who during his second term perfected an elitist and corrupt judicial system by appointing Judge Antonio Bermejo as President of the Supreme Court, which he led for 29 years, becoming the longest serving official of this period. position. Bermejo died in 1929 and his influence at court during the first three decades of the 20th century was decisive because there were never any dissenting votes and all kinds of human rights violations were practiced in the repression of the nascent labor movement. And he also left a fierce mandate: with the overthrow of Yrigoyen in 1930, the civil-military coup installed the first the 6 dictatorships of the century, all validated and legitimized by the supreme courts.

The members of this Court imposed by dictator José Félix Uriburu validated the overthrow of the constitutional authorities, thus giving rise to the so-called Doctrine of de facto governments, which was validated by the Attorney General of this military government: Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.

From then on, every dictatorship had recourse to courts which validated all authoritarian military governments. In 1955, the coup that overthrew Juan Domingo Perón suppressed for the first time in Argentine history to all members of a Supreme Court. The dictator Eduardo Lonardi appointed by decree 5 friendly judges to the Court and among his first agreements was to re-establish this doctrine of de facto governments. And then, in June 1956, Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, through a “revolutionary band”, abolished the National Constitution of 1949. In 1958, when Arturo Frondizi took the presidency, the five supreme who had designated the “liberator” self-proclaimed resigned. In 1962 he was overthrown, as in 1966 another coup overthrew Arturo Illia and in each case the members of these Cortes re-established the doctrine of de facto governments.

On March 24, 1976, the council headed by Videla and Massera dismissed all members of the Court, as well as all judges in the country were commissioned and a third was removed from office. Videla appointed a drug court whose 5 members swore “to comply with the basic objectives of the military junta”. No to the Constitution. This Court validated state terrorism and the disappearance of 30,000 compatriots, and dismissed more than 15,000 habeas corpus appeals.

In 1983, Raúl Alfonsín appointed a 5-member tribunal, for the first time with the consent of the Senate, which had a Peronist majority. Since 1989, Carlos Menem has increased the number of courtiers to 9 but conflicts were so frequent that between 1990 and 1994 Menem appointed 10 judges to the CSJN until imposing what was called an “automatic majority” in a court. without shame.

The 1994 constitutional reform established the Senate’s agreement to appoint the judges of the CSJN in “public session” and no longer in “secret” session. And he included the 75-year-old clause as an age limit for court judges.

The crisis of 2001, with the slogan “Let them all go”, led Congress to launch the indictment of all members of the Court. In 2003, barely taking office, President Néstor Kirchner indicted 4 magistrates, three of whom resigned and one was dismissed by the Senate. Kirchner established by decree a public procedure with citizen participation to appoint members of the Court, which allowed the entry of respected lawyers such as Eugenio Zaffaroni and Carmen Argibay. The CFK has governed two constitutional periods (2007-2015), being the only president who, in 8 years in office, has not appointed judges to the Supreme Court.

Later, in 2015, the Macrista Circus arrived and they started by placing two judges appointed by decree, flouting everything the Constitution provides.

Now, an advisory council convened by Alberto Fernández is considering what to do with the highly contested justice system that plagues citizens. This column knows that the proposal to expand the CSJN to 9 members proposed by the constitutional expert Raúl Gustavo Ferreyra was rejected by 9 of the 10 advisers accompanying the President on this decisive question, in order to legislatively rethink the powers of the Court with a decisive brake the number of causes that reach their podiums. Recognizing that the number of judges does not decisively determine the solution of cases, it horizontalizes decisions, preventing 3 judges from deciding everything, and in a framework of tens of thousands of questions that are never finished. And finally, for the respectable’s information, let’s say that it coincides with the old proposal of the Argentine Manifesto, which since 2002 has proposed the same thing, remember the number of judges in the supreme courts of certain countries: Japan 15, India 25, Canada 9 , Mexico and Brazil 11, Belgium and Spain 12, Colombia 23, Chile 21. Clearer, water. At least as long as you don’t have to pay for it.