The legal concepts of Raúl Zaffaroni mentioned by Cristina Kirchner

Cristina Kirchner appeared this Tuesday in Avellaneda to inaugurate the new Diego Armando Maradona sports center. There, the vice president mentioned the Supreme Court ruling regarding federal co-participation: CFK commented on the unusual decision of the highest court, which "ignored a law of Congress" by recently ruling in favor of the claim of the Buenos Aires government.  ; The former president described that  resolution of the Court as a fact "non-legal, as if the rule of law had disappeared". And to base himself on that classification, CFK commented that he used the concepts of Raúl Zaffaroni, who gave an extensive interview published by Página/12 on the performance of the Supreme Courts in the co-participation ruling.

“There is legal chaos, an absence of law,” says former Supreme Court judge Raúl Eugenio Zaffaroni. “It happens that the Court orders the President to take money and pay CABA. But since there is a budget law voted, yes the President uses the money for something not provided for in the law, he incurs the crime of embezzlement. In other words, the Court coerces the president to commit a crime. Therefore, in any case, he has to send a modification law of the budget, something that is delayed, of course", he affirms.

"Meanwhile, the request for revocation is presented before the Court itself. In legal terms, if there is an appeal, there is no breach. This is immediate, but it is the culmination of a complex process that has been taking place for a long time. It is as if we were on a small planet that has no law of gravity, we cannot know if something is heavier or lighter, just as we cannot know if something is legal or illegal”.

"The chaos is so great," Zaffaroni told Radio 10, "that there is no one to complain to, those who should guard the effectiveness of constitutional norms violate them. The law is not only laws in force because they were sanctioned by competent authorities, but also requires a minimum of effectiveness. That effectiveness was lost. We are facing a legal vacuum that was generated by the Supreme Court itself.”

Referring to what was decided by the highest court regarding the senators and the Council of the Magistracy or the trip to Lago Escondido of a group of magistrates, Zaffaroni added: "It is not understood why the Court meddles in the way in which the blocks of the national Senate are configured or remain indifferent when you see judges who receive a trip paid for by a tycoon and program how they hide it in a shameless chat conversation.”

The former judge of the Court also reflected that "it is not known why the Supreme Court decides sanitary and epidemiological issues without asking for the opinion of experts (ruling on the measures of the national government in relation to the covid) or that it is not interested in opening an instance when By public instrument we prove that the main witness was paid with a hotel (Ciccone case) or allows one of his own judges not to excuse himself in cases involving his former clients (referring to Carlos Rosenkranz). This is all because he feels like it."

“There is a very important institutional issue such as federal co-participation. The court issues an injunction, something that happens in a civil or commercial trial when someone who is supposed to be insolvent is seized or when a guy who can escape is put in preventive detention. Now, does the Court consider that the State is possibly insolvent or that it can flee? It does not do it for that, but there is something else, they prefer not to decide the root cause, ”he added.

“Instead of ruling on an institutional issue, the Court decides to proceed as if it were a commercial trial and provisionally gives half to each one, knowing that they are lying. The Court does not have deadlines to resolve and in that mercantilist distribution it will make that last until it occurs to it to add a final sentence, ”he pointed out.

Zaffaroni also said that “as long as appeals are filed there is no non-compliance, what will happen is that they will ignore it. So the Executive should violate the budget law, it would incur a crime of embezzlement that is typified in article 260, if I'm not mistaken, of the Penal Code. The Executive cannot allocate items to something else, it can be rearranged but not do what it wants."

“I can't imagine the situation I would find myself in if I have to defend a President of the Republic in front of a criminal court and I have to allege that he is innocent because he acted under coercion by the Supreme Court and that is why he committed the crime of embezzlement. I would send the matter to the National Congress,” he said.

“If Congress says no, the Executive cannot commit embezzlement because if they cannot prosecute President Alberto Fernández. If it is impossible to comply because the instrument is not provided to me, I prefer not to comply and not become an embezzler," Zaffaroni explained.

“We are left with a legal vacuum, there is no authority to claim the effectiveness of the constitutional norms and one day the people will realize this. This is legal chaos and chaos theory says that it is organized. There are forms of chaos that have a center and in this case it is the sovereign people, democratically understood politics is the people. The law cannot fill a legal vacuum, the legal cannot fill the non-legal. The people are the ones who are going to return the right, we lawyers do not have solutions because they caused a situation of lack of legality, ”he added.

”Referring to what was decided by the highest court regarding the senators and the Council of the Magistracy or the trip to Lago Escondido of a group of magistrates, Zaffaroni added: "It is not understood why the Court meddles in the way in which the blocks of the national Senate are configured or remain indifferent when you see judges who receive a trip paid for by a tycoon and program how they hide it in a shameless chat conversation.