In the final stretch to present accessions and challenges for candidates to join the Supreme Court of Justice proposed by Javier Milei, part of the bloc of deputies of the Radica Civic Unionl, the legislator’s GEN party Margarita Stolbizer and the Center for Legal and Social Studies (CELS) formalized this Wednesday their position against the selection of the controversial federal judge Ariel Lijo.
The presentations – which are made before the Ministry of Justice, which depends on Mariano Cúneo Libarona – are received until this Thursday, May 9, but given the national strike called for that date, those interested are rushing to formalize the process this Wednesday. After that, the Government will evaluate, classify what was received and send the documents from Lijo and the academic Manuel García-Mansilla to be treaties in the Senate –or you can give up of the candidacies.
The presentation of the UCR was by four deputies: Fernando Carbajal (Formosa), Pedro Galimberti (Entre Ríos), Manuel Aguirre (Corrientes) and Marcela Coli (The Pampa). The radicals observed Lijo’s statement before the Cúneo Libarona portfolio since he “has committed severe irregularities in the exercise of his position as a federal magistrate, some of which could even constitute criminal offenses.
Furthermore, the text of the radical challenge highlights that “his possible appointment generates resistance and lack of confidence in part of societyfor behavior maintained in his role as magistrate”, in reference to federal judge Lijo.
According to a statement issued this Wednesday by the UCR, one of the irregularities that would justify the challenge of Lijo’s candidacy is the complaint made by Elisa Carrió in 2018in which the judge was accused of being part of “a illicit association with Kirchnerism“. They also reproach him for the lack of progress in the YPF nationalization file in which the emptying of the company should be investigated. And in the bribery case known as Siemens. Both, as they say in the jargon, filed by Lijo .
In this sense, the UCR deputies stated that “the judge Lijo has “intentionally delayed the processing of cases in which acts of corruption were investigated with the purpose of guaranteeing impunity for the public officials investigated.”
They also question an alleged connection with Ricardo LorenzettiSupreme Court judge – and his role in the recommendation de Lijo for the highest court that Javier Milei himself explained. “This breaks with the republican principle of division of powers since it is the President of the Republic who must send a document to the Senate without prior intervention from the Supreme Court,” the radicals warned.
Galimberti, Carbajal, Aguirre and Coli add other objections: the complaint by the Bar Association of the City of Buenos Aires against Lijo for poor performance and the actions of the controversial magistrate in a complaint that filed the Sarandí Tobacco Factory.
This sum of causes “covers evidence of a bad federal judge, what consists of a terrible candidate and cannot be considered suitable to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court,” they say from the UCR.
“A federal judge who met Dr. Ariel Lijo’s background would be a universally rejected candidate in any normally functioning republic, for the simple reason that will generate discredit to the Supreme Court as an institutionwould undermine confidence both in the President of the Republic who proposed it, and in the Senate that gave the agreement and, ultimately, it would generate a feeling of lack of protection in the entire population in the judicial field in the face of any act of corruption,” he closes. the statement issued this Wednesday.
The challenges of Stolbizer and CELS against Lijo and García-Mansilla
On the other hand, both Congresswoman Stolbizer (of We Make the Federal Coalition) and her GEN party contested both nominations. The CELS had advanced the same, with positions criticism of Lijo and García-Mansilla.
GEN’s challenge, for its part, questions “the lack of gender representation, or female gaze in a Court made up exclusively of men”, also referring to the mark left on the Court by judges Elena Highton and Carmen Argibay.
In its writing, the GEN also states that “the applications must fall on people who are blamelessunquestionable for the general consideration of the population and the judicial academic world”, qualities that, they argue, both applicants do not meet.
“For what objective, under what reasons or for what purpose is a joint proposal formulated by two people who do not individually have the capacity to build broad consensus about themselves?” they ask in the submitted document, and The answer below is: “Both applicants, Drs. Ariel Lijo and Manuel García Mansilla, have been crossed out severely by various recognized organizations, due to the lack of academic background or because some of them have suspicions regarding their links and activities or for not providing sufficient guarantees of an unwavering commitment to human rights.
He Center for Legal and Social Studies, meanwhile, reported in a statement that it also presented a challenge to both candidacies. “We understand that Your profiles are incompatible with standards required to join the highest court,” they said.
In addition to stating that “nominating two male candidates to integrate the Court exclusively with men is contrary to the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women”, the CELS questioned Lijo for “the serious complaints in the Council of the Judiciary, linked to the lack of investigation of causes of corruption, the excessive delay in the treatment of different cases and illicit enrichment”. In addition, he recalled that “the candidate had a criminal complaint for illicit association, money laundering and bribery.
As for García Mansilla, they questioned his “very regressive positions on women’s rights and the legal interruption of pregnancy.”
Added to these challenges are those made by the organization Sera Justicia, which alleged the candidate’s lack of technical training to assume the position and maintained that Lijo “does not meet the essential conditions to make” an effective contribution to the improvement of the service. of justice and the increase in institutional quality”, that of the Association of Women Judges of Argentina, which questioned both Lijo and García-Mansilla, accusing “structural discrimination” and demanding that the position be granted to a woman and that of the Institute of Comparative Studies in Penal and Social Sciences, which last Thursday made its own defense regarding Lijo, stating that “if his only merit to join the Court is his judicial career, his candidacy is unacceptable, since he is statistically the most ineffective judge of all Comodoro Py”.
