ARGENTINA: Senate Considers Federal Takeover of Provincial Justice System

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 12 2005 (IPS) - The Argentine Senate is studying the possibility of having the federal government take over the judicial system in the western province of San Luis, where judges are reportedly forced to sign undated letters of resignation before taking office, under the orders of the family that has run the province for 22 years.

According to their detractors, the power wielded in San Luis by the brothers Adolfo and Alberto Rodríguez Saá since 1983, when democracy returned to Argentina after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, is based on a system of political clientelism that allows thousands of people to live off of provincial government subsidies.

Adolfo Rodríguez Saá governed the province from 1983 until Congress designated him caretaker president on Dec. 24, 2001, after protests and rioting brought down the government of Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001). However, he lasted only six days in the post until he was forced to resign by continued civil unrest.

His brother Alberto was elected governor of the province in April 2003.

Opposition lawmakers regularly denounce acts of corruption and other crimes committed by the Rodríguez Saá brothers, both of whom are members of the ruling Justicialista (Peronist) Party but at the opposite end of the political spectrum from left-leaning President Néstor Kirchner.

They also maintain that the judicial system, which should deal with these irregularities, is completely controlled by the provincial government.

"The justice system in San Luis cannot be allowed to continue in its current state. Those who have spoken out about this wrongdoing cannot just be abandoned, because their lives are in danger," Maria Julia Pérez Tort, legal action coordinator of the non-governmental group Poder Ciudadano (Citizens’ Power), told IPS.

Last week, Pérez Tort accompanied Marina Ziliotto when she testified before the Senate Constitutional Affairs Committee. The irregularities denounced by Ziliotto, a former magistrate with the San Luis appeals court, were so severe that the Senate is seriously considering the possibility of voting for the central government to directly take over the provincial judicial system.

But Pérez Tort believes it will be necessary to closely monitor the situation, because the power of the Rodríguez Saá brothers and the imminence of national legislative elections could influence the Committee’s response to the opposition lawmakers’ request for federal intervention.

Ziliotto was a public defender in San Luis when she won a seat on the court of appeals in 2004. Before assuming the position, however, she was summoned to an office in the provincial Ministry of Legal Affairs, where deputy minister Mario Zabala made her sign a letter of resignation with the date left blank.

The former judge says she signed the letter out of fear, and maintains that Zabala showed her similar letters signed by two of her colleagues on the appeals court bench.

Several days later, she was asked to join in on a slander campaign against other judges, launched by the provincial government, but refused. The next thing she knew, her resignation was being reported in the press, along with that of a number of other officials.

The scandal erupted on Apr. 11, when provincial public prosecutor Gretel Diamante met with Argentine Attorney General Esteban Righi to report numerous cases in which judges in San Luis were forced to sign resignation letters in order to be appointed.

The resignations of at least 11 judges, along with three Superior Court magistrates and the provincial public prosecutor, were announced over the space of just two months by the San Luis Ministry of Legal Affairs, which is where the complainants allegedly signed the documents involved.

Diamante stated that forcing judges and other judicial officials to sign undated resignation letters as a condition for appointment to their posts is a "widespread, systematic and coercive practice" used by high officials in the provincial government "to ensure the total subordination of one branch of power to another."

She said that she had brought the case to the federal authorities because there were no guarantees that it would be properly investigated at the provincial level. The crime committed here, she added, was that of "aggravated coercion." Once Diamante came forward, testimony was heard from a number of other judges involved.

Provincial Deputy Minister Zabala denies the allegations, but has not been able to explain why he summoned the judges and other officials to his office before they assumed their posts.

He has also failed to provide an explanation for why the news of Ziliotto’s resignation was published on Mar. 17 in the newspaper La República – which is owned by the Rodríguez Saá brothers – when her letter of resignation is dated four days later, Mar. 21.

It has also come to light that the government of Alberto Rodríguez Saá dissolved the provincial bar association, which would normally serve to monitor the actions of legal professionals and discipline any wrongdoing.

Diamante’s allegations are not the only evidence being considered by the Senate to determine whether an intervention is called for. The Constitutional Affairs Committee is also studying the case of Raúl Ochoa, a federal senator for San Luis who has been suspended over accusations that he voted twice in the national elections of October 2001, using two different sets of identification.

A federal court of first instance found Ochoa guilty, after dozens of witnesses testified that the lawmaker – who was president of the San Luis Chamber of Deputies at the time – had cast ballots in two different districts in the elections in which he himself was running for the office of federal senator.

Ochoa has said that he plans to appeal the ruling to the Federal Court of Appeals, but his colleagues must now decide whether he should be allowed to return to his Senate seat or remain suspended until a final verdict is reached, which could take several years.

Shortly before Ochoa was pronounced guilty, the Supreme Court had handed down another verdict unfavourable to the provincial government powers in San Luis, regarding a rather bizarre situation: for almost two years, the provincial capital had two mayors fighting for control of the city government.

In elections fraught with irregularities, the candidate endorsed by Governor Alberto Rodríguez Saá, María Angélica Torrontegui, was declared the winner, despite clear evidence that opposition candidate Daniel Pérsico had actually received more votes.

The Supreme Court ruled in favour of Pérsico, after he had spent almost two years struggling to govern the city without the funds that the provincial government was supposed to provide him with, but which it allocated instead to Torrontegui’s parallel municipal government.

Meanwhile, yet another example of the breakdown of the state of law in San Luis came to light this week, when it was reported in Buenos Aires that the mayor of a town in the province, who has close ties to Governor Rodríguez Saá, had taken office despite being banned for life from public office.

Jorge Elías was elected mayor of the municipality of Concarán in 2003 and proceeded to occupy this position despite the fact that in the mid-1990s he had been found guilty of fraud in the management of state funds and was permanently barred from holding public office as a result.