The integration of the Judicial Council became more complex with the discussion by the new representatives and a central aspect of that conflict will be whether or not the Supreme Court will swear Senator Martín Doñate and Deputy Roxana Reyes to take office in the body that selects and removes judges.
Last Wednesday, four new technical members were sworn in for the Council in front of the head of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, and although Congress had communicated their representatives hours before the act, the senator for Río Negro and the UCR deputy from Santa Cruz did not participate in the oath.
In the Court they explained that this happened this way because the rigorous procedure consists in that the Council sends the documents that endorse the candidate and that, once reviewed by the legal advisers, the highest court decides the date of the oath through an agreed one.
“Anxiety is not the logic of the Court,” clarified one of its spokesmen and also recalled that on the same day of the swearing-in, challenges to the two candidacies, both Doñate and Reyes, reached the Judicial Council.
Since last Monday, when the December 2021 ruling was executed by which the Court ordered a return to the composition of the body prior to 2006Rosatti is also the president of the Judicial Council.
In exercising this new function, Rosatti has already met with his main administrative officials, Mariano Pérez Roller and Daniel Cholakian; he even visited the plenary room, which has already been adapted for 20 members, and greeted the judicial employees.
Being already at the head of the Council and being the head of the Court, administrative issues and the way for the two missing councilors to take over should not be a problem for the Santa Fe jurist.
Nevertheless, The prudence with which the Court handled the situation of Doñate and Reyes was categorically fulfilled by the court sources: they limited themselves to saying, in legal terms, that it is just as possible that a date be set for the oath of both, how not.
A precedent that supports the alternative of allowing the assumption of the candidates discussed was carried out in 2015 by the PRO councilor Pablo Tonelli, when the macrismo gathered the votes of more than fifteen blocks and interblocks to push for their incorporation into the body that selects and remove judges.
As on this occasion the parliamentary opposition complained about Doñate’s candidacy, at that time the Front for Victory resorted to Justice with an injunction that was rejected with the argument that the decisions made within the powers of a power are not legal matter.
Based on this foundation, in the sector closest to the Council’s ruling party, they estimate that “there is no margin” for the Court to continue without defining a swearing-in date for Doñate and Reyes, beyond the ongoing judicialization of both designations.
In this institutional conflict between powers, the interbloc of the ruling party in the Senate will try to reactivate next week the discussion on a reform in the composition of the Court, to expand the current integration from 5 members to 9.
The proposal of the Front of All, as well as the half-sanction that it gave in the upper house to the bill on the Council, emphasizes the federalization of these judicial institutions.
For this, he proposes to designate the future representatives of the organization by region.
But these initiatives are complicated by the correlation of forces that currently exists in the Chamber of Deputies, where the opposition has already anticipated that it will block any reformist attempt in Justice while continuing to claim the condition of the second minority in the Senate for the PRO bloc.
The Cordovan senator Luis Judge claims for himself the place of Doñate and his political objective was transferred last Thursday to the federal courts of Comodoro Py, where he criminally denounced Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
The multiple political-institutional and judicial scenarios typical of a conflict of this type sustain expectations while important definitions are expected for next week.
