RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Alberto Fernández accused Mauricio Macri‘s former government of promoting “the arbitrary harassment and detention of opponents” in corruption cases and promised solutions: “In two months of government we have begun to repair the damage caused, demanding a review of the judicial and arbitrary proceedings”.
En los últimos años el lawfare se instaló en Argentina.
Entonces cuestioné la complacencia judicial y mediática con el poder político que posibilitó la persecución y detención arbitraria de opositores.
Nunca más a una justicia que decide y persigue según los vientos políticos. pic.twitter.com/x0LCN1WrpO— Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 18, 2020
The message was recorded in a video almost two minutes long, posted on the president’s official Twitter account and signed by the Ministry of Justice.
Why now? The message was mainly directed at his supporters, rather than at others. Since his inauguration on December 10th, Fernandez has faced the demand of Kirchnerist leaders arrested during Macri’s term of office, who demand to be immediately released because they consider themselves “political prisoners”, and his rejection of a theory that would condemn him to admit that in his Government there are leaders arrested without a trial.
Alberto Fernández is juggling. The friendly fire comes from the heavyweight leaders of thoroughbred Kirchnerism, represented by the most famous detainee, former Minister Julio de Vido, the man who commanded the budget of all public works during the presidencies of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner. De Vido is serving a sentence for the so-called Once tragedy, a railway accident – an area under his supervision – which left 51 dead, and pre-trial detention in two cases for alleged corruption.
Also in the group is former Vice President Amado Boudou, convicted of misappropriation of public funds, and second-level officials linked to public works concessions. As head of this whole structure, the courts have singled out Cristina Kirchner, currently vice-president, who avoided pre-trial detention through her privileged status as senator.
The Kirchnerist prisoners have always claimed to be victims of a judicial persecution orchestrated by Macri to suppress the opposition. Last year, testifying at the first hearing she faces, and days before taking office as vice-president, Cristina Kirchner spoke of lawfare, a term that defines the abusive use of judicial proceedings by the political and media powers. Alberto Fernández repeated this term although he made it clear that one thing is to be a political prisoner, and another the victim of “arbitrary detention,” as he prefers to regard De Vido and other party peers.
“In Argentina, there are arbitrary arrests that should not continue to occur. Many of these people have been under arrest for years, although the law allowed them to await their trials in freedom,” the president said in a statement that the video placed in August 2019, before he was elected to office.
The video goes on to state that during Macri’s administration, Argentina “suffered serious human rights violations, and the rule of law was systematically violated through the regional application of lawfare’s persecution tactics”. And he retrieves the report of the UN special rapporteur on the independence of attorneys and magistrates, Diego García Sayán, who cautioned about the existence of “a systematic and structural plan of intimidation of the judiciary” in Macri’s Argentina.
“Two months into the government, we have begun to repair the damage caused, demanding a review of the judicial and arbitrary proceedings,” says a video caption. If by chance the most fierce Kirchnerism had not yet made it clear, it does not speak of political prisoners and argues that the solution to the pre-trial arrests of high-ranking leaders will have to be solved in the courts.
Macri supporters reacted to Fernández’s accusations. In a long communiqué, the coalition that supported his unsuccessful candidacy for re-election said that the video “is of unusual severity, because it is a direct attack on the independence of judges, because it upholds the plan to ensure impunity of former officials prosecuted and convicted for corruption, and because it intends to deprive the ‘Juntos por la Mudanza’ (“Together for Change”) of its democratic legitimacy”.
Social welfare reform
Fernández’s offensive coincides with a reform that seeks to end the social welfare privileges of the judiciary. This law, to be submitted to Congress this week, provides that the contribution of magistrates to the pension system will increase from 11 to 18 percent of their earnings and that they will no longer be able to retire with 82 percent of their last salary, but with an average of the last ten years’ wages.
In addition to having these privileges, judges are the only Argentinians who do not pay income tax on their salaries, an anomaly that no government has bothered to remove.
The official view is that there will be a period of two months in which judges who meet the requirements will be able to retire under the current rule. This would cause an avalanche of defections in the courts and would leave the government free to appoint new magistrates.
Source: El País