Argentine President appoints new Minister of Justice

On Monday, President Alberto Fernández appointed a Peronist deputy considered key to carry out a reform of the Judiciary as Argentina’s new Minister of Justice, which is viewed with suspicion by judges and the opposition.

The appointment of Martín Soria came a week after the current Minister Marcela Losardo, a personal friend of the president, communicated her decision to leave the cabinet amid the public bid that the government maintains with sectors of the justice system.

“Today (Monday) I had lunch with Martín Soria. I told him what my expectations were and he agreed to take over, ”Fernández said in an interview with channel 9 in Buenos Aires. The president clarified that before taking office, Soria must present his resignation as a deputy and Congress accept it.

National deputy for the province of Río Negro, Soria integrates the strategic parliamentary commissions of justice, Criminal Legislation, Constitutional Affairs and Political Trial.

Publicly, the deputy Soria has questioned the work of the judges who are in charge of corruption cases against former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015), the current vice president. It has also promoted complaints against the alleged interference of the previous government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) in the courts to persecute opponents.

The Fernández government presented different initiatives in Congress to advance a reform to modernize the judicial system, in particular the federal jurisdiction that is in charge of the most sensitive causes, such as corruption, money laundering and drug trafficking.

The initiative is rejected by the opposition and magistrates’ associations, who consider it an advance of the political power over the judicial one with the intention of favoring the legal situation of the vice president.

Losardo’s departure marks the third change in Fernández’s cabinet since he took office in 2019. Previously, the Minister of Territorial Development and Habitat, María Eugenia Bielsa, resigned and more recently the Minister of Health, Ginés González García, was fired after a scandal over irregularities in vaccination against coronavirus.