Argentina - Protests against a politicized judicial reform
President Fernandez is giving way to his vice president and pushing a reform that will drop corruption investigations.
Thousands of protesters took the streets in Argentina yesterday, with the vast majority focused on criticizing the judicial reform plans of President Alberto Fernandez.
Two things are simultaneously true:
Argentina needs judicial reform. Power within the judicial system is too concentrated and there aren’t enough judges and prosecutors. This means cases move slowly and judges can help their allies with few checks on their power. Additionally, most experts agree the system should be converted into an accusatorial system in which prosecutors bring cases and judges act as neutral arbiters.
Fernandez’s judicial reform proposal aims to strengthen the power of the Peronists within the judicial system by expanding the court system and packing it with allies. The reform will unfairly help allies of Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner avoid corruption charges.
It’s that second point that brought people to the streets. In spite of rhetoric by the president and his allies that stresses the neutrality of this reform, both the process and the content of the reform point to a power grab.
Understanding that a prolonged fight in the Congress will simply lead to greater opposition, Fernandez and his allies have attempted to expedite the process in every way, pushing to have the issue debated and passed within a matter of weeks.
As part of this reform process, a commission of experts appointed by the president seems likely to push for an expanded Supreme Court that the president will be able to pack with supporters. To confirm the worst suspicions of the president’s political opponents, the commission includes Carlos Beraldi, the defense lawyer for Vice President Kirchner in her corruption trials.
Source: Clarin
Fernandez trapped between his VP’s base and the majority of the country
The president maintains majority support in the country. The vice president’s approval rating is around the 35-40% mark, meaning it is 15 to 20 points below the president’s.
Fernandez has spent a large portion of his early months demonstrating his independence from his vice president, something that has allowed him to improve his ratings and unify the country during the health crisis.
However, the president cannot afford to lose his vice president in an internal Peronist battle. Kirchner gave her approval of the recent debt negotiation, providing the president the flexibility he needed. Her base of supporters on the street and in the Congress remain incredibly loyal to the president according to recent polls. She now appears to be demanding this judicial reform as the price for her support.
Politicizing the anti-corruption agenda will be a long term public opinion disaster for Fernandez
If it passes, the likely effect of this judicial reform is that it fulfills the worst fears of its critics. The corruption cases against the vice president and her allies will be dropped by a politicized judiciary. Undermining the independence of the judicial branch and the anti-corruption fight will harm the efforts against crime and corruption in the country.
The threat to Fernandez is that, after months of stressing his own independence, he will use his political capital passing judicial reform only to see his image indelibly tied to Kirchner’s and his approval ratings drop to his vice president’s level. That won’t be a short term public opinion hit. It will continue to impact his image for years every time a case against the Peronists is dropped or a case against the president’s opponents including Macri is taken on by the judiciary.
Additionally, using his political capital on judicial reform now could harm his efforts to pass a bigger economic response to the crisis in the coming months. The Personist base is loyal to CFK, but they will still turn on any president who fails to deliver the basic economic needs in the middle of a recession.
Fernandez’s opposition remains divided
One piece of good news for Fernandez is that even with this controversial issue near the top of the agenda, his opponents are not particularly united. The Juntos por el Cambio coalition of Mauricio Macri has less than 20% support nationwide.
Yesterday’s protests demonstrate those divisions. While the judicial reform was a key issue, the protests also included and overlapped with groups that are angry about the renewed quarantine restrictions. Those anti-quarantine protesters can be further subdivided into some with legitimate economic concerns about the restrictions and others who pushed fringe conspiracies about vaccines and masks. Fernandez and the Peronists are going to be able to keep their opponents divided by highlighting the fringe views that are distant from the majority of Argentines who want corruption prosecutions and a strong public health response to the pandemic.
A politicized judicial reform is the sort of policy that a majority of people will oppose, but not an issue that will unite and organize the opposition into a force that can win in the midterms. Fernandez’s opposition still needs a different and proactive agenda and they need leadership that can focus on the issues Argentines care about including corruption prosecutions.
Thanks for reading
I went back and forth between writing about Argentina or Mexico today as both have had significant corruption news in recent weeks. I’ll be sure to discuss Mexico and the Lozoya case in the next two weeks.