The Front of All (FdT) of the Chamber of Deputies is getting ready to start the impeachment process against the judges of the Supreme Court of Justice that was promoted by President Alberto Fernández and several governors, and the ruling party will ask that they be called to testify the magistrates of the highest court.
According to the regulation, Once the investigation has begun with a simple majority, the commission will request documentation from the Justice and will call the accused magistrates, who can, however, excuse themselves from testifying and also summon other witnesses.
Nevertheless, the ruling party has enough votes to approve the opening of the summary and issue an opinion, once the investigation process has been completed.
Then he will have at least two months to carry out the process and look for possible parliamentary agreements that allow him to add wills to give continuity to the process.
In that sense, Martínez assured that “more and more consensus” will be achieved as progress is made in the impeachment trial. against members of the Supreme Court.
“We are going to proceed seriously, with arguments and without chicanes. As we progress, I assure you that there will be more and more consensus in the decision of the president and the governors,” said the legislator from Santa Fe.
The commission, chaired by Gaillard, has 31 members: 16 from the FdT, 14 from Together for Change (JxC) and 1 from the Federal Interbloc, Alejandro ‘Topo’ Rodríguez.
The official bench waits for the Executive Power to send the call to extraordinary sessions of Congress to start the debate on this removal process and other projects that the Government proposes to debate in Parliament.
Both the representatives of the opposition interblock and the Buenos Aires legislator have already anticipated that they will not support the text promoted by the president and the governors.
In fact, between next Monday and Tuesday, the document with the grounds against the Supreme Court judges, which President Alberto Fernández delivered to the head of the block of FdT deputies, Germán Martínez, and to the head of the Impeachment Committee , Carolina Gaillard, will have to transform herself into a draft resolution to start the process in the lower house.
In any case, and since Congress is in recess, In order for the commission to become operational, the Executive Branch must convene extraordinary meetings through a DNU and set an agenda that includes the debate on the issue so that the commission can function.
Once the request for impeachment against the four members of the Supreme Court (President Horacio Rosatti; Vice President Carlos Rosenkrantz; Juan Carlos Maqueda and Ricardo Lorenzetti) has been entered, the members of the Impeachment Committee must decide whether to open the investigation or if they reject it “in limine”.
Although the FdT has a majority to open an investigation and issue an opinion in the Impeachment Committee to approve that process in the room you need two thirds of the members present.
The fundamental aspects of the process
Parliamentary sources specified that the investigation will focus on two fundamental aspects: the ruling of the Supreme Court that restores co-participating funds to the city of Buenos Aires and the interference of the highest court on the composition of the Council of the Magistracy.
Meanwhile, the sources They do not rule out that the ruling party may also propose incorporating into the commission’s debate the request for prosecution that in 2021 was formulated by the leader of the Civic Coalition (CC), Elisa Carrió, against the Court judge, Ricardo Lorenzetti.
At that time, Carrió accused the jurist from Santa Fe of having committed serious administrative and budgetary irregularities while he was president of the highest court.
This alternative could put JxC, which already anticipated its rejection of the proposal formulated by the President and several governors, in a dilemma that, according to some opposition legislators, would seek to divide the positions of the main opposition bloc.
Within the framework of this process, the Impeachment Commission is empowered to carry out inspections; request to justice the search of the address of those investigated and kidnap elements that can serve as evidence, as well as intercept their correspondence and telephone communications, as long as their immunity is not violated.
Anyway, the opinions of the Impeachment Committee are valid for three parliamentary yearsTherefore, if it advances, the proposal does not expire with the renewal of the body after a legislative election and it has three years to be able to be dealt with on the premises.
The 2004 political trial promoted by Kirchner
The last impeachment trial against members of the Court was in 2004 at the beginning of the first presidency of Néstor Kirchner, who prompted the impeachment trial of five of the nine judges of the so-called “automatic majority” Court during the government of Carlos Menem: Julio Nazareno, Adolfo Vázquez, Eduardo Moliné O’Connor, Guillermo López, and Antonio Boggiano.
Nazareno, López and Vázquez resigned before the end of the process and thus avoided their removal, while Congress advanced in the process against Boggiano and Moliné O’Connor, who were finally removed.
The first time in Argentina that the members of the Supreme Court were dismissed for impeachment was in 1947, at the initiative of the Government of Juan Domingo Perón, when this process was promoted for having endorsed the 1930 coup d’état by means of an agreement. overthrew Hipólito Yrigoyen.
