Opinion

Trial of a criminal or the whole of peronism

photo_camera christina-fernandez-de-kirchner

Twelve federal judges will pass sentence this week to acquit or convict the current vice-president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández, widow of Kirchner, a surname that embodies the last decline of Peronism, that mixture of caudillismo and populism that has marked the life of the country to the present day, since General Juan Domingo Perón became the leader of the nation.

Mrs Fernández claims that the trial in the Vialidad case and all the investigation that has preceded it, apart from being a set-up by the opposition against her, has already drawn up the verdict in advance. In her plea, the current number two in power in Argentina, but considered the effective number one in practice, describes the trial brought by what she calls the "judicial party" as a "trial of all Peronism", a term she uses to discredit all the magistrates who have investigated her in numerous cases of alleged corruption.

The prosecutor Pablo Luciani, who investigated the Vialidad case, asked in his conclusions that Cristina, whom her supporters simply refer to as K, be sentenced to twelve years in prison and disqualified from holding any public office for life. The prosecutor justifies this on the grounds that Ms Fernández, during her presidency (2007-2015) led an illicit association whose purpose was the enrichment of its members at the expense of the state through bribes that facilitated the awarding of public works. Key players were the then Minister of Federal Planning, Julio de Vido, and businessman Lázaro Báez. The former is already in prison for his responsibility in the Once tragedy, the 22 February 2012 train accident that left 52 people dead.

As for Lázaro Báez, he was an obscure and unknown bank clerk, who in barely half a year went from a life of anonymity in line with his modest income to the undeniable luxury of the billionaire and nouveau riche. The prosecutor quantifies the damage caused to the state by the fraudulent award of 51 road works contracts to Austral Construcciones, the company created by Báez to receive the public money and proceed to its corresponding laundering and distribution, at one billion dollars. Lázaro Báez has already been sentenced to twelve years in prison for money laundering, which came from contracts conveniently inflated with public money to carry out works in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, the Kirchner couple's fiefdom, from which they multiplied their fortune, and a springboard for their access to and conquest of the Casa Rosada.

A very common and well-known defence strategy

Mrs Fernández de Kirchner's defence has not managed to prove that these events did not take place, but rather that the then president and now vice-president knew nothing of such dealings because she was busy with higher and more important matters of state. On the contrary, the prosecutor's plea asserts that all the ingredients are present to classify as an "illicit association" a group that, "in a strict separation of roles, stole the fruits of the treasury for private gain, adopting all the necessary measures to do so with impunity and deactivating all the control mechanisms". Pablo Luciani believes that this way of committing crimes is impossible without the connivance of those in political power who grant, protect and protect those who receive, execute and launder.

By elevating her case to "persecution of all Peronism", Cristina is following the same textbook as all the major suspects in similar situations, albeit with very different outcomes: from the Catalan Jordi Pujol in the Banco Catalana case, to the string of presidents of Latin American countries who have been imprisoned or have had to go into exile before they were caught. It is also textbook for the vice-president to accuse the opposition, in her case former president Mauricio Macri, of being the mastermind behind the operation, accusing him that, by going against her, he is "going against those who are preventing wage rises and the exercise of workers' and pensioners' rights".

The vice-president has also used in her defence the alleged attempt to assassinate her on 1 September. Cristina Fernández was about to enter her home in the Recoleta neighbourhood of Buenos Aires when an alleged gunman, Fernando Sabag Morel, dodged the thick security cordon around the vice-president, pointed a pistol at her face and fired two shots. A scene that could indeed have been terrible but which had the happy ending that the vice-president was still alive and well, as providence meant that the gun jammed and the bullets never went out in search of their intended target.

Now it is the judges who will pass sentence, disqualified in advance by the president and her supporters, especially the organisation La Cámpora, which is led by her own son, and which has already accumulated numerous cases of complaints of intimidation and aggression.

Earlier this year, thanks to the film Argentina 1985, Argentines relived the painstaking and hard-fought investigation by prosecutor Julio César Strassera, which led to the first ever trial and conviction of the military juntas under which 30,000 people perished. Now, this week, live and direct, you will witness the verdict of the first trial ever held in the country against the number two, actually the number one, of the ruling power.