The Council of the Magistracy begins to define who will replace Bruglia and Bertuzzi in the Federal Chamber

Less than one hundred days after the ruling issued by the Supreme Court of Justice on the transfers of judges, the Council of the Magistracy begins to define as of tomorrow who will be those who will occupy, permanently, the two key places where, for now, the judges are seated Leopoldo Bruglia and Pablo Bertuzzi. Is that this Monday, at midnight, the registration period closes for those who want to apply.

Until today, neither Bruglia nor Bertuzzi had entered the contest. Judicial sources told Infobae that Bertuzzi will score before closing. Bruglia, meanwhile, evaluated until the last moment what to do, although she would end up signing up, they pointed out in her environment.

The exam is scheduled for February 26, although how it will be carried out is not yet defined: the exam must be face-to-face, with all participants in the same place, but the pandemic can complicate things. In fact, it is the first contest that has been activated since COVID-19 came to change the rules of what is already known.

Leopoldo Bruglia (CIJ)

Although the Supreme Court said that all transferred judges had their hours counted in their positions if they did not face a contest in the Council, they won it and they obtained the endorsement of the Senate, The body that selects and controls the judges only activated the contest by Chamber I of the Federal Chamber, the strategic court that reviews the corruption causes of Comodoro Py. As soon as the ruling of the Court took place, on November 3, the President of the Alberto Lugones He had said that between six and eight months could be the new designated incumbents.

In Room II, meanwhile, the composition already seems defined: to the historical Martin Irurzun, President of the Federal Chamber, the judge has already joined him this week Eduardo Farah, returned from the courts of San Martín, after a transfer in macro-era times that was, precisely, without support after the ruling of the Court by Bruglia and Bertuzzi. Farah had requested that transfer in 2018 after the ruling that he signed in the Oil Combustible case and that ended up criticizing the then president Mauricio Macri. But the Court’s ruling on Bruglia and Bertuzzi reopened the doors of Comodoro Py for him. Unlike all the rest of the judges who wanted to stay where they had been transferred, Farah warned that he was not interested in competing for ownership in the San Martín courts. Thus, he settled in the office that he used to occupy in the Retiro building.

For March, the landing of the lawyer is expected Roberto Boico, Cristina Kirchner’s lawyer in the Memorandum case, whose name -contest by- was sent by President Alberto Fernández this Thursday to the Senate. The ruling party has the majority to make Boico the next chambermaid of Comodoro Py 2002.

Pablo Bertuzzi (CIJ)

Therefore the gaze of the ruling party is on what will happen to Room I. This week, the first applicants to participate in the contest for the two positions of that court began to register. There are already several registered for the contest. Several of them saw their chances of reaching the Federal Chamber frustrated, when the operation launched by the Council of the Magistracy last July led to believe that the vacancies to be filled on the second floor of Comodoro Py could be four, taking those who had been best positioned in an already open contest. That was ruled out with the Supreme Court ruling.

Judges Marcelo Martínez De Giorgi and Sebastián Ramos are among those who are already registered to try their luck, who already occupy -respectively- the ownership of courts 8 and 2. There is time until midnight on Monday for those who want to join. The members of the jury that will take part are Mirta Gladis Sotelo de Andreau, Javier Augusto De Luca, Alberto Salomón Montbrun and Claudia Alicia Rezek. The alternates will be Jorge Ernesto Rodríguez, Daniel Oscar Cuenca, Beatriz Rajland and Laura María Giosa.

Roberto Boico 

Neither Bruglia nor Bertuzzi signed up yet. But everything indicates that they wrote their names on the list. Bertuzzi, at least, has already decided, while Bruglia was a little more indecisive and warned that he will be defined at the last minute.

In the environment of both judges they say that, even if they take the best exam, they will leave them with the worst score because they want them out. For this reason, the eye is on the lawsuit that they presented in the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Even the judges had asked the IACHR to send overseers to the contest.

“We have been removed by politics of our positions as Judges of the Federal Chamber of the City of Buenos Aires, vital for those who currently manage the power system, for reasons that individually or in combination generated a fictional scheme that the current authorities of the Argentine State used to evict us expeditiously of the charges we arrested. They were apparently lawful acts with an original vice of illegality (centered in the Council of the Magistracy of the Nation), mounted from the maximum structure of State power and perfectly coordinated. Through this illicit action, they violated the guarantees of tenure and stability that we enjoyed. The motives can be various, without ruling out revenge, seeking impunity or simply obtaining charges from the central scheme of the judiciary”, They assured.

That lawsuit, however, has no certainty of success while the clock of the Council of the Magistracy has already counted down. For this reason, the strategy of Bruglia and Bertuzzi would then be to participate so that nobody throws them out before their time. The Supreme Court has already said that the transferred judges remain in their positions until the selection process defines the incumbents. Thus, both are still in their offices.

If the contest progresses and the “winners” are other candidates, Bruglia should return to Federal Oral Court 4, on the sixth floor of Comodoro Py. Bertuzzi, on the other hand, would be returned to an oral court in La Plata, because the TOF 4 – where he served in 2018 when he was transferred to the Federal Chamber – also arrived with a transfer, but this time signed by Cristina Kirchner.

The Court’s ruling was a kind of implosion in the courts, due to the effects caused by the claim of Bruglia and Bertuzzi when they argued that the transfers were transitory: the entire universe of “passes” was left on the line. The Court seized the definition at the end of September through a per saltum, a decision that took the Government by surprise. President Alberto Fernandez he criticized that per saltum of the Supreme Court whenever he could, especially after the ruling that confirmed the conviction of the former vice president Beloved Boudou in the Ciccone case, through appeal “280”. It was from then on that from Kirchnerism he reinforced the warnings of political trials and the expansion of the number of members of the highest court.