The day that Comodoro Py passed into the background for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

The media revolution that took place this last week after the ruling of the Supreme Court, which gave rise to a precautionary measure (without resolving the fund) of the City Government for the removal of co-participating funds, is not new, although perhaps in On this occasion, politics reached the point of wanting to cross any limit when the president announced that the ruling would not be complied with because it was "impossible to comply."

It is known that in Argentina for many years, politics and justice have danced a tango in pairs in which, depending on events, one sets the pace for the other, as we explained in the book Powerful that I wrote with Lucía. Salinas, in a dialectical relationship between the two, a safe-conduct that is fed back and enters into tension circumstantially.

This situation is no exception, it is one of the most critical moments in the relationship between the current government and the Highest court. Something that at this point leaves the criticism of the Comodoro Py courts almost in the background. But it is not necessary to go back a long time to remember that in December 2021 we were witnessing a similar situation.

Specifically, when the judges of the Court resolved -after a long time- to declare the unconstitutionality of the composition promoted for the Council of the Magistracy by Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner when she was a senator in 2006.

In the ruling the body was ordered to complete the number of 20 members while Congress was urged to enact a law that would comply with the constitutional mandate on the balance of the estates to avoid the hegemony of one of them. 

A year later, the Council still could not be completed due to the situation that arose in the political establishment with the second minority in the Senate. Everything was prosecuted, and on November 8 of this year it was the Court itself that revoked the appointment of the senator of the Frente de Todos Martín Doñate and maintained that the place corresponded to Luis Juez for the period 2022.

The ruling party rejected the decision and questioned it in harsh terms, and days later, not only was Doñate reappointed for the new period, but they also did so through a session to give it a legal framework and also repudiate the ruling. of the Court. 

If we go back to the beginning of the year , on February 1, with the epicenter in the Palace of Courts and with different marches throughout the country, different political, union and human rights organizations demonstrated against the Supreme Court and called for a reform judicial. They wanted the four judges to leave, two of whom they accused of being hitchhiked by Mauricio Macri and of having put them through the window. Almost in a World Cup chant they yelled at them to resign.

In fact, in a document that was read at that time, they argued: "This Court has to leave because with its recent decision to expand the Judicial Council it violates the republican principle of division of powers, it is placed above the Executive and Legislative, with the sole purpose of also presiding over a Constitutional control body, managing the budget of the Court and the Council and guaranteeing impunity for officials of the Judiciary who have been denounced, and at the same time facilitating the appointment of officials related to their project”.  ;

It is not the first time that an attempt has been made to go against the Highest Court, as the late President Néstor Kirchner did when, on National television in 2003, shortly after taking office, he asked Congress for some impeachment tool against some members of the Court  belonging to the already famous "automatic majority" of Menemism.

In that speech he pronounced the following: "We ask with all humility, but with courage and firmness, that the legislators, that the National Congress, mark a milestone towards the new Argentina preserving the institutions of men who are not at the height of the circumstances".

Those words led to resignations and political trials and a change in the selection of Court magistrates through decree 222/03.

Some time later the number of members in the Court was reduced from 9 to 5, and during the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner the democratization of Justice was promoted without luck, and from then on each proposal has been failing.

In May 2021 a group of jurists, including Lucila Larrandart, Eduardo Barcesat, Carlos Rozanski and former member of the Court Raúl Zaffaroni requested the impeachment of Carlos Rosenkrantz, Juan Carlos Maqueda, Horacio Rosatti and Ricardo Lorenzetti after the ruling in favor of the City government in the dispute it had with the national government over attendance at schools. Something that did not prosper but that clearly generated noise and that the subject was on the table.

And it is that in May 2020 the Court ruled in favor of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires against the Decree of Necessity and Urgency that to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, which determined the suspension of face-to-face classes.

At that time, it was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner herself who fully attacked the Court through her networks, she said: 

"Today, the Court has just decided, in the midst of a pandemic decreed by the WHO, a health emergency sanctioned by the National Congress and with more than 65,000 deaths in Argentina, that the National Executive Branch does not have the power to take sanitary measures."

In addition, he stated through his Twitter account: "Given this scenario, I say... in order to govern, would it not be better to run for a position as Judge to the Magistracy Council or for a President to propose you for Minister of the Court? Honestly, it is very clear that the blows against the democratic institutions elected by the popular vote are no longer like before".

But that would not be the only time that the vice president targeted the ministers of the Court. In June of this year several proposals made by her defense in the Road Cause were dismissed, which led a month later to new criticisms that were accompanied by related sectors.

Once again, using his social networks, he uploaded a video of more than 14 minutes in which he directly attacked the Supreme Court, referring to the "exemplary" of Néstor Kirchner, but did not leave out the criticism of Comodoro Py magistrates. 

When speaking of "persecution", he then referred to the fact that "the hegemonic media began to anticipate -like modern Nostradamus-, how the Court of the four was going to rule, in the case forged and known in the media as "roads" or "work public”. The same one in which, with electoral calendar in hand, they began the oral trial on May 21, 2019, exactly one month before the lists for the presidential elections closed. Thus, and with a three-year delay, the Court of the four ruled exactly as those media anticipated: rejecting each and every one of the appeals and evidence measures that we had requested.

It was a totally atypical ruling, he maintained: "To the lack of legal argumentation and the offensive language used -even citing that of the genocidal Jorge Rafael Videla as a precedent-, was added the explicit and shameless prejudgment of the four courtiers, as a guarantee anticipated for the sentence that, as I said on December 1, 2019 before the Oral Court, they already have it written and I believe, at this point, even signed ”.

Let's go back to the beginning of the letter: according to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, "in 2003, a few days after taking office and before the public threat to dollarize the economy formulated by the president of the Supreme Court of Justice at that time... , President Néstor Kirchner addressed the country on a national television channel announcing that he would send to the Chamber of Deputies the request for impeachment of the members of that Court, who formed the popularly known “automatic majority”.

From that decision, and limiting himself in his own faculties to propose the candidates, Néstor Kirchner built a Supreme Court of Justice that was cataloged by his own and others as an "exemplary Court". 

It is no coincidence that, beyond the bombardment of questions that Comodoro Py had on the table in recent years, now everything points squarely to the Highest Court, judges who from the ruling party and sectors closest to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner accuse of be related to the hegemonic media. It is precisely that this Court will be the one that must continue resolving the proposals of the defense of the Vice and the one that ultimately decides as the last instance against the 6-year sentence and disqualification by the Federal Oral Court 2 in the Road Cause for the addressing of public works in favor of Lázaro Báez. 

This Court, which has become the quintessential enemy of this government, practically remains unscathed because it knows to this day that it is very difficult for a political trial against it to prosper. You can like a sentence or not, but it is adjusted to the law, you don't see a bad performance. And even if an appeal is filed to extend deadlines, sooner or later those decisions made by the Highest Court must be executed. 

Today the scenario is complex and the rift, which for an instant seemed to disappear in society with the triumph of the National Team in the World Cup, where one and the other hugged, even being from River or Boca, because we are all Argentines, lasted a breath. Peace did not last a week, politics once again became the protagonist, showing its miseries. The war of each other for a bit of power ends up having an impact on society.

Because, ultimately, the powerful that they are, judges and politicians, often seem to be unaware of what the inhabitants of our country need. At a time when poverty and inflation are protagonists, they only seem to care about showing who has the longest rod, because -as I said before- they feed off each other, and today the desire of a group of political leaders who want to remove this Court It seems to be out of reach, because it is very difficult at this point in Congress to reach an agreement to advance a political trial, especially with an opposition that would never vote or give the ruling party a victory.

What is clear is that for the first time Comodoro Py fell behind the judges of the Court in criticism, those who today are on the front page of all the media, because a government decided to stand behind its vice president in a war without sense.

In fact, in a document that was read at that time, they argued: "This Court has to leave because with its recent decision to expand the Judicial Council it violates the republican principle of division of powers, it is placed above the Executive and Legislative, with the sole purpose of also presiding over a Constitutional control body, managing the budget of the Court and the Council and guaranteeing impunity for officials of the Judiciary who have been denounced, and at the same time facilitating the appointment of officials related to their project”.