Next week, when
the presentation of the two Government candidates to the Supreme Court
is formalized and the period opens for civil society and politics to present their challenges or support for the nominations of Ariel Lijo and Manuel García-Mansilla,
Javier Milei will once again test the way he chose to govern
in the first stage of his mandate.
The two judges will have to defend themselves alone and in writing against the complaints of politicians, universities and NGOs and, what is most strange on these occasions,
they will also have to gather the votes themselves
when the President sends his documents to the Senate.
Just as happened with the first version of the Omnibus Law and that could also happen with the new incarnation of this compendium of reforms,
the Government does not have the votes guaranteed
, nor did it manage to tie the alliances to obtain them, before they reach the Legislative Branch. .
This occurs due to a decision by Milei himself and his closest team of collaborators. “
We present things the way we want them to be
. That is our proposal. In this case we want the two candidates to appear for the Court. It's both or neither,"
one of the very few officials who knows the Government's moves in advance told
Clarín this week.
Until today, the votes that these two judicial candidates need
do not appear
.
Lijo made some informal surveys among the governors who called him to greet him when the news broke and also among the senators he knows best, but the account he has in his head is a preliminary sketch. Those conversations did convince him that the fate of his nomination
does not depend on the Government's negotiating capacity
: he knows very well that he will have to resolve the issue by appealing to the
very long list of contacts in politics
that he garnered during his twenty years as a federal judge. .
It is true that this race is, at the same time,
what causes Lijo the most problems today
. None of the current members of the Court have a past as a judge, and perhaps that is why the process that Lijo will have to go through will be unique. There is no case of a federal judge who has reached the Supreme Court with the rules and procedure that he governs today, and that is why
the defense that Lijo will have to deploy
to avoid the microscope review of all the rulings will also be unprecedented. he.
García-Mansilla will only have to mention his past as an academic, although there will also be scrutiny of his heritage and his curricular background that concerns everyone. In his case, it is most likely that he will emerge from the process with a series of future excuses to be safe from conflicts of interest with those who are his clients today, among them the oil companies.
Although they do not have the votes in their pockets, the Government insists that they will continue with the process.
Milei's idea is to send a message to the current majority of the Court
, the trident made up of Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz and Juan Carlos Maqueda. From his conversations with Ricardo Lorenzetti, the President came away convinced that these judges are postponing the decision to declare mega DNU 70/2023 constitutional. For this reason, Lorenzetti asked the President to nominate Lijo, the federal judge he knows best.
Rosatti has another idea about the delay around DNU 70. This same month, the president of the Court said that it is time that Justice gives politics to resolve its own conflicts.
The presentation of the specifications
will be one more example of the haphazard way in which this Government is going through its first months
. His officials explain that today, Milei has two objectives:
lower inflation and regain control of the street
. “For that we don't need any law, we can do it without Congress,” says one of the men closest to the President.
However, that same source says that to make more structural changes Milei does need laws. “That's why we send the projects. Whoever wants to join, let him do so. If they don't come out, we will continue insisting. If they do not vote for them, it will serve to reaffirm the idea that politicians are people who do not want Argentina to change.
That adds to us for politics and for our campaign
,” admits that official, at this point converted into one of the main libertarian oracles.