Patience was exhausted. Ariel Lijo and Manuel García Mansilla’s sheets to occupy the vacancies of the Supreme Court wandered over the Congress for eleven months and, three days after the period of ordinary sessions startJavier Milei released the bomb with which he had threatened other times: he appointed them by decree. The reaction of much of the political and legal arch soon appeared.
For detractors, the problem is double: on the one hand Lijo, full of suspicions for his actions as a federal judge, received hundreds of objections during the selection process And in the opposition they wonder what is the president’s stubbornness in putting a candidate who did not even propose, but was approached by the courtier Ricardo Lorenzetti. On the other hand, the forms: in his speech in the Senate, García Mansilla had warned that appointing a judge of the highest court by decree, although it was constitutional, affected the institutionality. At the close of this edition, he had not yet accepted his own appointment.
Debate.
“The objective is to normalize the operation of the highest judicial court of our country, that cannot be carried out with only three ministers, ”argued the presidency statement on the decree that Milei signed on Tuesday, February 25.
By the president’s modus operandi, It was remembered how Mauricio Macri had tried to advance by decree with the designations of Horacio Rosatti and Carlos Rosenkrantz in 2015. But there is a substantial difference: in the face of criticism there was back and the postulates did not assume but waited for approval in the Senate, which took place six months later.
In fact, García Mansilla himself had assured that he would not accept the appointment by decree to the Court. He did it in the defense of the application before the Agreement Commission, at the end of August. The professor has even a master’s thesis presented in 2001 about the “crisis in the separation of powers in Argentina.” The file did not resist.
Unlike García Mansilla, Lijo has no problem accepting the appointment. But the pressure on his nomination is greater: the judge has 32 complaints in the Council of the Magistracy. He was accused, among other issues, for illicit association and money laundering. It is also suspected of sleeping in his office important causes of corruption, some that have been stopped for more than a decade.
The decision to advance with Lijo even produced internal short circuits. To the protest of a part of the libertarian militancy, which recalls the slow action of the judge in causes against Cristina Kirchner, the non -adhesion of the vice president, Victoria Villarruel, is added, who in a talk at the Bar Association had evidenced her repairs: “We would have all wanted to have a candidate who is proud. And this is not the case, ”he said on that occasion. That is why the vice had been left out of the search for wills in the upper house.
On this occasion, Milei was not publicly accompanied by anyone. If even the PRO, which supports many of its measures, turned its back on you. Its owner, Mauricio Macri, had advised the president to advise the designation of the federal judge. “I told him that I don’t like Lijo”he told one of his meetings. And he completed: “He told me: ‘Well presi, I don’t care, it’s my decision because I think he is going to produce a change within the court.”
The designation by Decree of Lijo favored a part of Peronism, which saw his rise with good eyes, but he would have to pay the political cost of accompanying Milei in Congress. It was a double victory that was celebrated under the low: they got what they wanted without wear.
Publicly, even Raúl Zaffaroni, the former court of the Court near Kirchnerism, condemned Milei’s decision. For the former magistrate, the decree is unconstitutional and will be a reason for complaints. In fact, it was one step further: if they get to assume, the sentences that sign could be declared void in the future.
Different law schools in the country demonstrated in the same way. And they added one more question to the matter: What would happen if, after the designation of the new courtiers, Congress rejects the nomination that is still in force? No one is certain about the answer.
On Saturday 1, Milei was face to face with legislators at the beginning of ordinary sessions in Congress. With the current guest court, and the public debut of García Mansilla, the opposition tried to explain its actions. The president, of course, did not. Lijo lacked the appointment.
Reaction.
Although they were aware of the possibility, the current body of the Court learned by the media of the president’s decree. It generated internal noise. In spite of that, Horacio Rosatti, the man who accumulated the most power in the highest court in recent years, and who would lose it with this new majority of Lorenzetti-Lijo-Mansilla, preferred not to comment on the matter.
It is that Rosatti got the concerns together. While observing the political reactions to the designation of the judges, he prepared to go to the Bombonera to see Boca play against Alianza Lima de Peru. It was a double day of unfortunately: from his plate he saw how the team of which he is a fan was outside the Copa Libertadores by penalties.
The one who celebrated the decision is Lorenzetti, whose power within the court had won when he left the presidency, in October 2018. Now he could manage the majority again: something important for underlying issues, sentences, and also those of form, the administrative management of the Judiciary. “I see an excessive ambition. He has done everything to return to the Presidency of the Court, ”complained former Supreme Juan Carlos Maqueda about the internal struggle of the highest court.
Rosatti and Rosenkrantz have an ace under their sleeves: they will be the ones who decide on the Lijo license request this Thursday. If they do not accept it, they would force him to resign as a judge, assuming the risk of staying within this year without his position and without the place in court, If you do not get the two thirds of the necessary votes in the Senate before November 30. A capital risk.
For Lijo there is a bittersweet feeling in its designation. He arrives at the position of greatest hierarchy of the Judiciary, a place with which every judge dreams, but not in the way he imagined: He did everything possible to gather the votes and politics turned his back. Uncertainty about his future remains latent.
