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Argentina prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola are under enormous pressure in the trial against the former president and current VP Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. This is not only a legal case; she is trying to turn it into a political one by claiming that “it is a trial against Peronism.”
For political scientist Marcos Novaro, the lawfare argument that Cristina has used is a disadvantage for her because she is in power, and the results of her administration are not at all successful.
But let’s dive into the strictly legal matters. “Cristina Kirchner and her close associates would have defrauded the Argentine Treasury with 5,321 million Argentine pesos (about US$ 926 million). According to the newspaper La Tercera, “this is the result of an analysis of irregularities in the 51 construction works that Lázaro Báez, a businessman from the province of Santa Cruz, is said to have won in a bidding process”.
After nine lengthy hearings in which documents, WhatsApp conversations, public contracts, and bids were shown, Luciani said about the “corruption matrix”: “The person revealed as the head of the illicit association is Cristina Fernández, who served as President of the Nation.” The charges against the former president are illicit association and tax fraud.
But what Luciani surely never imagined was the campaign that the trial would unleash by the Puebla Group and the Progressive International to exonerate Cristina Kirchner in advance, even though there is a great deal of evidence against her. These organizations seek to accuse Luciani and the Argentine judicial system of being “instruments of the right-wing” to incriminate “comrade Cristina.”
According to a note published by the official Argentine news agency, Telam, “The Puebla Group regrets and rejects the legal war (lawfare) that is being carried out against Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in a process riddled with contradictions and motivated by obscure political interests of powerful economic conglomerates, in a declaration signed by 26 political leaders of Latin America”. They also state that it “confirms the risky trend, unfortunately, common to other cases in Latin America against former presidents such as Lula da Silva, Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, and Dilma Rousseff, with a common denominator: retaliation for their work on the side of progressivism.”
It is noteworthy that all the cases mentioned by Grupo de Puebla are widely documented, one of the most emblematic being that of Evo Morales, based on the fraud that the coca grower leader perpetrated in the Bolivian presidential elections of 2019, which was uncovered by a team of experts and subsequently verified by the Organization of American States (OAS).
For the Puebla Group, it does not matter whether Cristina Kirchner, Lula, Correa, Morales, and Rousseff are innocent or guilty, but they belong to their lodge; therefore, they must be defended by the other members. But when it comes to their adversaries, the Group brands them as guilty (even when they are innocent) for not being part of the clan.
The Progressive International did the same when, last August 24th, it published a letter signed by four presidents in office, who considered that Cristina Kirchner was the object of an “unjustifiable judicial persecution” with the aim of “implanting a neoliberal model.”
Surprisingly, the letter is also signed by the current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández. Instead of defending his country’s judicial system against undue foreign interference, he sided with Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Luis Arce, and Gustavo Petro to attack his fellow citizens, judges, and prosecutors.
Not satisfied with that, the Argentinean president, in the TV program A Dos Voces, and in what constitutes for some analysts a clear threat, put forward the idea that prosecutor Luciani could suffer the same fate as prosecutor Nisman “who committed suicide” when the general suspicion is that he was murdered because of the investigation he was carrying out against the current VP.
Thus, this Saturday, August 27th, Kirchnerism carried out violent demonstrations to protest against the trial of Cristina. Is the socialism of the 21st century seeking justice or defending its members over reason, truth, and the law? In a way, these demonstrations also constitute a veiled threat against those handling Cristina’s case, including prosecutor Luciani.
Democratic sectors in Ibero-America must react forcefully against the pressures of the socialists inside and outside Argentina to achieve justice and prevent impunity from prevailing.
Nitu Pérez Osuna es una reconocida periodista venezolana en el exilio. Por muchos años fue una de las caras principales del canal de noticias más importante de su país, hasta que fue vendido a aliados de la dictadura chavista, por lo que fue despedida. Nitu Pérez Osuna es perseguida política de Nicolás Maduro y se ha dedicado a denunciar, no solo a la dictadura de su país, sino a los regímenes socialistas de todo el continente.