The lack of political consensus puts legislative activity in check in Argentina. In this 2023 election, the Senate is on the way to a negative record: since the legislative year began, on March 1, it has only held four sessions. This Wednesday the fifth was called, but the pro-government Front of All (FdT) failed to gather the 37 necessary legislators – that is, half plus one of the 72 total – for the debate to begin in the chamber. The bone of contention were the 75 lists of judges proposed by the ruling party. In particular one of them, the one that sought to keep magistrate Ana María Figueroa, considered akin to Kirchnerism, in the court that is holding two of the cases open against the vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The 33 senators from the opposition coalition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC) had already anticipated that they would be absent from the venue if the appointment of judges was included on the agenda. The ruling party, with 31 senators since four of them left their ranks in February to found a new bloc, needed six allies to have a quorum, that is, to start the session. Three were missing.
“The final objective was Figueroa and we succeeded in blocking it,” declared the president of JxC in the Upper House, Alfredo Cornejo, after the frustrated session. “We have the objective of blocking the appointments of Kirchnerism judges,” Cornejo added at an impromptu press conference after the session fell.
Figueroa is a member of the Criminal Cassation Chamber, the highest court in Argentina below the Supreme Court. Next month she will be 75 years old and if she is not authorized before by the Senate she will have to retire. The opposition wants to prevent her from remaining in office since she takes her vote for Kirchner for granted in the two cases that involve her: the one known as Hotesur-Los Sauces and the one on the Iran Memorandum. For this reason, if a new session is called that deals with her statement, JxC will once again do everything possible to stop it.
In the Hotesur-Los Sauces case, Kirchner had been indicted along with her children Máximo and Florencia for alleged money laundering and illicit association through the Los Sauces family real estate company and the company that manages the hotels owned by the Kirchners in the province Patagonia of Santa Cruz, Hotesur. The Chamber of Cassation must decide whether to keep the file of the judicial file issued by a court of first instance last year or order that it be reopened and an oral and public trial be held.
The chamber should also issue an order on Kirchner’s dismissal in the Iran Memorandum case. Last year, in a unanimous ruling, a court declared the absence of a crime in the agreement signed between Argentina and Iran in 2013 in relation to the case investigating the attack against the Jewish mutual AMIA, which caused the death of 85 people in 1994. The former president was denounced by the prosecutor Alberto Nisman as an alleged concealer of the Iranians accused of being the ideological authors of the attack. Four days later, Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment.
The fall of the session was a major setback for Kirchner, also head of the Upper House. The former president was in the Senate, but she avoided going down to the premises, assuming that they were not going to reach the number of legislators necessary for the quorum.
“If they want Figueroa to stop being a judge, they should come and say so here,” said the pro-government senator Anabel Fernández Sagasti. “Maybe it bothers them that there are honest judges who don’t compromise with the economic powers,” she continued, facing the empty opposition seats. The head of the FdT interblock in the Upper House, José Mayans, criticized the lack of “institutional responsibility” of the opposition in the face of the refusal to discuss appointments of judges in vacant positions. “There is an urgent need for justice to work,” he lamented. During the session it was also planned that five bills would be voted on, which will have to wait for a new occasion.
In Argentina, it is common for legislative activity to slow down in the years in which presidential elections are held. However, even in these there is a downward trend. From the 18 sessions held in 2015, there were 14 in 2019. In this 2023, the great differences between the two coalitions that dominate Argentine politics —FdT and JxC— and the confrontation between Kirchnerism and justice have almost paralyzed the Senate, the chamber responsible for approving magistrate appointments. If the lack of consensus continues, this year a new minimum will be established.
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