The Council of the Judiciary will begin next Thursday, with a coordination meeting, a new institutional stage with twenty members instead of thirteen, after the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional last December the balance between technical and political members.
Starting at 9, and with the president of the Court and now head of the Council Horacio Rosatti at the head, the collegiate body will define its agenda and priorities after a long and controversial restructuring process.
The meeting will be face-to-face, at the Council’s headquarters located at 700 Libertad, in the heart of the Buenos Aires judicial district, and It will be the first time that the new directors meet and those who come from the old management.
In this first meeting the idea, according to sources from the organization, is to define a common view on the state of the judicial system and that includes the budget situation, the infrastructure, the vacancies in courts and chambers, the competitions underway and the new integration of The commissions.
Unlike the plenary sessions of the body, which are public and broadcast on digital platforms, Coordination or work meetings are closed to directors and their advisers, which is why it is a propitious circumstance for free exchange.
Since mid-December, the Council and its thirteen members at the time had to comply with the Court’s ruling that ordered them to return to the composition of twenty members within a maximum period of 120 days.
This “expiration date” forced the Council to convene the associations of lawyers and magistrates against the clock to elect new representatives and thus prevent their acts from becoming null after April 18.
The most critical position on the Court’s decision, and its meager deadlines, came precisely from the then president of the Council, the prison chamberlain of San Martín Alberto Lugoneswho defined as soon as he knew the sentence that “I don’t like the Court’s ruling but as a judge I must comply with it”.
Lugones has already cleared the office of the presidency for Rosatti to occupy and the president of the Court has already toured the headquarters on Libertad Street to learn about the internal management of the Council and its employees.
Although Rosatti formally became president of the Council on April 18, when the Court, through an agreement, ordered the start-up of the new Council “immediately”, this Thursday will be the Santa Fe’s debut coordinating and directing the council meetings.
In the immediate horizon, the new council has to choose the lists of candidates to cover three vacancies in the first instance of federal justice and two in the Federal Chamber.
The complex procedure involved in the selection of a candidate for magistrate is completed in these cases and the only thing missing is the agreement of the councilors to submit the shortlists to the Executive Branch.
Previous attempts to reach a majority failed and now the new Board has the challenge of reaching the necessary quorum of twelve directors and getting two-thirds of those present to vote in favor of the three proposals.
In this political exercise that any collegiate body must take, The ruling party trusts that the opposition is committed to an “active” Council that begins to resolve the high percentage of vacancies in courts at all levels and jurisdictions of the judiciary.
vacancies
According to estimates in the Council, the short lists to fill the vacancies in federal courts 6, 11 and 12, led by Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, Claudio Bonadio and Sergio Torres, will have no major inconvenience in obtaining the vote of two thirds of the councilors.
Instead, The shortlists continue to compete to fill the two vacancies of the Chamber I Federal Chamber, which are temporarily occupied by Leopoldo Bruglia and Pablo Bertuzzi.
In November of last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the positions of both cameramen, promoted during the management of Mauricio Macrihad a “provisional” character and a contest had to be called to choose the replacements.
The Council appointed the deputy counselor to define the shortlists in the 461 contest vanessa sileywho last February and after the background check, the exam and the interview, defined two short lists that he presented to the Selection Commission.
The first was made up of the federal judge of Tucumán Fernando Luis Rodolfo Poviña; the prosecutor Cecilia Incardona and the Economic Criminal Judge Javier López Biscayart.
The second was made up of the prosecutor and coordinator of the Specialized Prosecution Unit for Violence against Women, Agustina Inés Rodríguez, Gonzalo Ezequiel Viña and Julio Di Giorgio.
Counselors Pablo Tonelli, a PRO deputy, and Judge Juan Manuel Culotta presented alternative shortlists that considered Bertuzzi as a candidate to remain in office.
This, and other conflicts, will be the ones to be defined as of Thursday by the Council under the tutelage of Horacio Rosatti.
