On Thursday night, April 14, at a table in Aldo’s restaurant, in Palermo, they met for the first time two key people from the environment of Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Kirchner. They are the legal guardians of both leaders. One is Vilma IbarraLegal and Technical Secretary of the Presidency, and the other, Graciana PeñafortDirector of Legal Affairs of the Senate.
The meeting is relevant these days because it took place on the eve of the changes in the Judicial Council and the role played by the president of the Supreme Court Horacio Rosatti in those events. That night there was a third guest, the lawyer Alejandro Rúa, partner of Penafort in his study and lawyer, too, from Cristina Kirchner. They ate meat and watered the evening with malbecs and Diet Coke. Peñafort does not drink alcohol.
Justice
So much Ibarra as Peñafortbefore being officials, they are lawyers, so their reasoning is influenced by that profession and therefore everything related to Supreme Court and the Judicial Council They are conversation starters for them.
But there is another relevant point of the meeting. Can friendship become Ibarra and Penafort in a dialogue channel between Alberto and Cristina? Both led the media defense of the ruling party with a common position on the issue of Judicial Council. During the meal, the issue that occupies the ruling party at this time was discussed. Even before the conflict with the Supreme Court It could be assumed that Alberto Fernández was making efforts to send friendly signals to Cristina, but the vice president did not seem willing to give in to the gestures. Kirchnerism calls for concrete actions that are far from what Fernandez is willing to do. CFK He sent a message along these lines in the middle of this month at the opening of the fourteenth plenary session of the European-Latin American Parliamentary Assembly (EuroLat). “Inequalities are not a product of nature, they are a product of political decisions or lack of political decisions. Beware that not making political decisions is also political”, the vice president fired in the direction of the president’s office. In other words, the discussion entered the ideological field and, therefore, the conflict could escalate, at least when looking at the government’s economic policy.
In this context of friction in the ruling party, the emergence of a conflict with the Judiciary could be considered something positive, because it aligns the entire Government behind a common cause. In this point Vilma Ibarra and Graciana Peñafort are two important links in the consideration of the President and his vice. The main advisers in judicial matters of Fernández are Ibarra and the head of Advisors Juan Manuel Olmos. On Cristina’s side are the Secretary of Justice Juan Martín Mena and also Peñafort. Sergio Massa also participates in these tables, who, sometimes, approaches suggestions sent by the Minister of the Court Ricardo Lorenzetti, estranged from Horacio Rosatti. An example: among the suggestions made by Lorenzetti was the possibility of issuing a DNU to organize the composition of the Council of the Judiciary until the bill is resolved in the Chamber of Deputies. In the Government they discarded this possibility, at least, at the closing of this edition.
