Media Law: Gov't considers impeachment of judges
A Kirchnerite senator warned today that judges who upheld an injunction request made by the media group Clarín on Thursday could be impeached.
One day after “7D,” the Kirchnerite Senator Marcelo Fuentes (Victory Front-Neuquén) warned civil appeals court judges Francisco de las Carreras and María Susana Najurieta, that they could face impeachment “not for having extended (the injunction requested by Clarín), but because the rules of the due legal process have been violated.”Fuentes, who heads the Upper House’s Institutional Affairs Committee, said that the national government has filed “criminal charges against the whole (civil) appeals court due to the irregular weekly rotation system of judges, something that leads to a lack of impartiality.
“If the judges want to govern or legislate though their rulings, that sparks a conflict of powers that is solved by the National Congress via an impeachment,” Fuentes said in remarks to El Mundo radio.
To promote an impeachment the government needs two thirds of the votes of the 13 members of the Council of Magistrates. Some government attempts in previous cases have failed to gather the necessary votes in the judiciary watchdog.
The government had set Friday, “7D,” as the deadline for Clarín group to divest its “monopoly” after a recent Supreme Court ruling said the injunction expired on that date. National government officials called the civil court ruling “an uprising” against democracy.
On Friday, the national government filed an appeal before the Supreme Court under the recently passed per saltum proceeding. Per saltum allows the top Court to by-pass a series of lower court instances.
The Court is expected to consider this week whether it decides to accept the case according to per saltum proceedings. Clarín on Friday formally asked the Court to throw out the national government’s per saltum request. The Court rejected Clarín’s request saying it was “inadmissible.”
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