Proposed Court System Reform Plans Inflame Argentina Politics

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – This week, the Argentine Senate opened debate on the judicial system reform announced by President Alberto Fernández. Although Fernández had already announced the proposal during last year’s election campaign, last week’s announcement prompted a broad public debate in which, in particular, sections of the political opposition voiced their concerns.

On Tuesday, August 4th, Justice Minister Marcela Losardo spoke before the Senate to argue for the reform, which aims to “improve the judicial system”. When introducing the project, Fernández also stated that he wants to establish an “independent judiciary” that guarantees “the highest levels of transparency” and can conduct trials with “integrity and efficiency”.

At the heart of the reform is the planned merger of the Federal Criminal Court, the Federal Prison Court and the Court for Commercial Criminal Law. To this end, a Federal Criminal Court is to be established in the capital Buenos Aires. The plans also provide for a significant increase in the number of prosecutors and judges. There are currently twelve federal judges to handle all corruption, drug trafficking, human smuggling and money laundering cases. In the future there will be 23. This is intended to distribute control, particularly of corruption crimes, onto several shoulders. The number of courts is also to increase to 23.

The reform is also intended to assign to the City of Buenos Aires, the jurisdiction to investigate and judge all non-federal crimes committed on its territory. This would mainly concern corruption cases. However, the judiciary in the country’s interior is also to be reinforced, and the number of judges and courts there is also to be significantly increased.

“We must solve the country’s structural problems,” said President Fernández, in explaining the reform plans. According to him, one of the most pressing problems is the operation of the federal justice system. “No one should ever again be prosecuted without sufficient evidence,” Fernández continued. He was referring to the unsuccessful attempts during the government of his predecessor in office, Mauricio Macri, to convict left-wing political representatives, in particular the ex-president and current vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and thus ban them from political activities.

Opponents of the project consider this very aspect of the ongoing investigations against left-wing politicians and their close associates to be problematic. They fear that the reform is particularly intended to put an end to these investigations. However, both Fernández and Losardo strongly disagreed with this view. On the contrary, they argued that no prosecutor or judge would be removed from an ongoing case.

Fernández, himself a former professor of criminal law at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), also stressed that the goal was to restore credibility in the judicial system. Macri’s reputation suffered greatly during his years in office, as there was a growing perception that the judiciary was primarily dependent on the political climate.

Over the past few months it became known that during Macris’s presidency, widespread illegal surveillance of politicians, judges, journalists, entrepreneurs, clergymen, trade unionists and social activists had allegedly been conducted by the Federal Intelligence Service (AFI). Investigations into this matter were launched in early June and are currently ongoing. Macri’s term in office had been marked by measures “that interfered with the rules of impartiality,” said Fernández. This should be excluded in the future when the reform comes into force.

Critics also mention the costs that would be incurred in enlarging the judicial system. Federal judge José María Campagnoli criticized the reform as an “attempt to manipulate one of the state powers” and to fill the new positions with judges close to the current government.

For his part, Félix Crous, the head of the state anti-corruption office, considers the government’s plans to be a “rescue operation comparable to the 1983 democratic transition,” as he told the state news agency Telam. It is “a process of the state regaining judicial power.”