Argentine President Alberto Fernández, in a recorded message, rejects the court’s decision to suspend elections in two Peronist provincesESTEBAN COLLAZO (AFP)
The open war between the Argentine government and the Supreme Court reached a new high this week. On Tuesday, three of the four colonels (one was traveling and there is one vacancy) suspended elections that two Peronist provinces – San Juan and Tucumán – had scheduled for this Sunday, May 14. It was an extreme measure motivated by a demand by the opposition to challenge two candidates for governor and lieutenant governor. President Alberto Fernández responded to the court ruling this Wednesday with a message to a nationwide chain. “It makes democracy hostage to a group of judges,” he lamented. The Casa Rosada and the court have been at odds for months. Since January, a commission dominated by MPs from the ruling party has been conducting a political case against the Supreme Court, accusing it of “unusual jurisprudential interpretations” that allow the judiciary to interfere in the decisions of the National Congress.
Next Sunday, the provinces of San Juan and Tucumán were scheduled to hold executive and legislature elections. Both districts have been controlled for years by two Peronist politicians: Sergio Uñac first and Juan Manzur second. Both Uñac and Manzur alternated the positions of governor and vice president, a strategy they used to guarantee actual power and also circumvent the limit on re-election set in their respective constitutions. The opposition asked the court to defuse what they saw as a legal trap. The positions of governor and vice must be viewed as a unit, they argue, and thus Uñac and Manzur cannot run, having reached the statutory term limit.
The judges took their time examining the allegations and decided this Tuesday, five days before the elections, to suspend the elections, request information on the case from the provinces and postpone the substantive question until the end of the month. They did so, moreover, with very harsh words: “The political history of Argentina is tragically prodigal in institutional experiments that have attempted, with lesser or greater scale and success, to enforce—in some cases even to make disappear—the republican principles enshrined in our constitution. ” . This past should deter court cases whose sole purpose is to grant those who have already held these offices for twelve consecutive years four more years in the province’s highest judicial offices, in violation of the constitutional text.
The texts come from previous judgments in which the court also ruled against the re-election of governors, such as in Santiago del Estero (North) in 2003. The difference this time was the time. On this occasion, the candidate had time to find a replacement – his wife – and keep power in the shadows. This time, the few days left until the elections angered the entire political leadership, which had not counted on the coup. The Fernández government reacted reflexively. He accused the court of working for the opposition and of questioning the autonomy of the provinces. “The Supreme Court has once again demonstrated its ability to adapt its decisions to the political needs of the opposition, thereby once again revealing its undemocratic character and deep disregard for the federal regime that governs us,” Fernández said in a recorded message.
Peronism took for granted the victory of Manzur as lieutenant governor of Tucumán and of Uñac as governor of San Juan. It would have been an oxygen balloon at a particularly difficult time. Rapid inflation is putting a heavy strain on the electoral ambitions of the government, which has no candidate five months before the national elections. President Fernández gave up his re-election under the pressure of Kirchnerism, which wants to keep him as far away from any electoral structure as possible; Cristina Kirchner, the leader of the movement, had already announced in December that she would not run after being sentenced to six years in prison for corruption (the sentence is not final); Economy Minister Sergio Massa, the candidate Kirchner had in mind, is unstoppable in his fight against inflation, which is well over 100% a year.
The Tucumán authorities decided to abide by the verdict and suspended the elections for all positions. San Juan, meanwhile, suspended the governor’s election but allowed the state and local elections to stand. For the opposition, the court’s verdict was a triumph against the aspirations of the leaders, who they say administer their districts as “fiefdoms.” But what’s at stake behind the political noise is the war between the government and the Supreme Court, which has intensified in the heat of the Cristina Kirchner trial. An example of this is the political process that is decided in Congress. “I would like to inform you,” Fernández said this Wednesday, “that we will provide the background to these decisions so that they can be combined with the reasons for impeachment, to continue to show how this court violates the separation of powers and federalism.”
The verdict was a show of force by three of the four courtiers most outspokenly opposed to the government: Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Juan Carlos Maqueda. The fourth, Ricardo Lorenzetti, who is more close to Casa Rosada, did not sign because he happened to be traveling through Europe. The pen of the Court today has more power than that of President Fernández. And more than that of Minister Massa. On Tuesday, Rosatti spoke as a guest at a US Chamber of Commerce forum. There, to everyone’s surprise, he referred to the economic crisis. “The constitution requires defending the value of the currency, which must draw our attention to the uncontrolled expansion of the currency issue, because that means not defending the currency and betraying the mandate of the constitution,” the judge said. The inflation index for April will be published this Friday and will be around 8%. Massa will consider to what extent this percentage is unconstitutional.
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