The exclusion from the Supreme Court” class=”com-link” data-reactroot=””>exclusion from the Supreme Court of the Judicial Councila key body in the selection and removal of judges, has become the Cristina Kirchner’s new obsession. Taking into account that this week the Front of All will give half sanction to the project in the Senate, all eyes are on the Chamber of Deputieswhere Together for Change was put on alert Given the possibility that the ruling party, that already went on the hunt for votesget the majority to make it law.
The initiative that the ruling party will approve in the Senate proposes a Council of the Judiciary with 17 members –currently there are 13–, but closes the door to the participation of the Supreme Court. Thus, it maintains intact one of the foundation stones of the law that was approved in 2006 at the request of Cristina Kirchner and that was declared unconstitutional by the highest court last December. On the contrary, Together for Change argues that the Supreme Court –through its president– should not only be represented in the body but should also preside over it.. Who better than the head of the Supreme Court – a body rich in resources – to manage the budgetary imbalance of the Judiciary, they argue.
A third alternative is the one raised by the deputy of the Federal interbloc Graciela Camano, who also serves as a member of the Judicial Council. Camaño proposes that the Supreme Court has a seat on the Council but, unlike Together for Change, it insists that should not preside over the body. Not only that: it suggests that the representative of the high court be rotary for one year so that all the judges of the Court and not only its president exercise representation on the Council.
In Together for Change they look at Camaño’s proposal with distrust. “The only meaning that the Supreme Court would have to integrate the Council of the Judiciary is to preside over it; It would be humiliation for a judge of the highest court to equate it to the level of lawyers, academics or judges. The hierarchy of the Supreme Court would be unknown”, they wield in the main opposition coalition.
Camaño refutes these arguments. The Buenos Aires deputy does not agree that the representative of the Supreme Court assumes all-embracing faculties in the Council of the Judiciary for the sole fact of being a member of the highest court of Justice. He warns that the record is not good when in the past, prior to the 2006 reform, the President of the Court, in turn head of the Council, concentrated the management of the millionaire resources of the Judiciary. “There was favoritism”slide, and propose that the Court participates in the administration of the Justice budget but within a commission made up of the other estates.
Deputy Camaño’s position aroused all kinds of suspicions in their colleagues from Together for Change. “Graciela is about to agree with the ruling party so that the law amending the Council of the Magistrature is approved with reduced powers for the Court,” they warn. Background is not lacking for the opponents for their mistrust: in 2020 Camaño voted with the ruling party in the Council of the Magistracy for the Executive Branch to review the transfer of ten federal judges carried out during the government of Mauricio Macri, considering that the appointment of appointment had to circumvent the endorsement of the Senate. Among those judges were Leopoldo Bruglia and Pablo Bertuzziof the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber, who had ratified the prosecution and preventive detention of Cristina Kirchner in several cases in which the vice president is being investigated for acts of corruption, such as the bribery notebooks.
Camaño, veteran in legislative battles, ignores the pressures and suspicions that are aroused about her. “Until now, no one from the ruling party has contacted me to negotiate anything,” she asserts. And he emphasizes: “The Constitution and the laws are clear: the judges of all instances must be represented in the Judicial Council, the Court is one of those instances, but nowhere is it established that he should preside over it”, sentence.
The truth is that the position of Graciela Camaño opened a crack that the ruling party in the Chamber of Deputies could take advantage of if it is in its spirit to negotiate a new wording of the bill coming from the Senate. The ruling party, in a minority with 118 members, needs eleven allied deputies to reach the quorum. It is discounted that it will have the support of the five members of the United Provinces interblock: there the deputies who respond to the senator from Rio Negro Alberto Weretilneck, who will facilitate this week the average sanction in the Senate after negotiating some adjustments to the original opinion. With 123 insured legislators, the Front of All still needs to secure another six wills. If the four leftist deputies agreed to sit on their benches –even in their rejection of the pro-government project–, the pro-government would be very close to achieving its objective.
There appears the Federal interblockwith its eight deputies, as the great white hope for the Front of All. Within it, positions are divided. The Cordovan deputies who answer to the governor John Schiaretti They maintain, like Together for Change, that the president of the Supreme Court is the one who should preside over the Judicial Council. In the same sense, it is expressed Alejandro “Topo” Rodriguez, president of the interbloc, who endorsed the statements of his political boss, the former Minister of Economy Roberto Lavagna.
The deputy Camaño affirms the opposite and thus will express it in a minority opinion when the subject is discussed in the Commissions for Justice and Constitutional Affairsin which she will act as sole representative of the interblock.
Even if I manage to close positions with Camaño, the ruling party will not necessarily have a path free of obstacles to achieve its objectives. The Buenos Aires deputy will try to seal a possible modification of the half sanction of the Senate with the two-thirds of the votes to prevent the senators who respond to Cristina Kirchner from imposing the original version when the bill returns to the Senate. “They will only get my vote if it is accepted that the Supreme Court integrates the Council of the Judiciary,” says Camaño. It will be necessary to see if the vice president agrees to accept their conditions.