MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Battling the Justice system, Cristina Fernandez main political battle this year

Rosendo Fraga, historian and sharp political analyst

Reforming or democratizing the Argentine Justice system and the Supreme Court is forecasted to become the main political battle of this year, according to Rosendo Fraga a low profile Argentine historian and a sharp political analyst.

In a column published in La Nacion Fraga points out that for over a century and until the late sixties in Argentina the presidential state of the nation speeches to Congress showed basically how the leaders wanted history to remember them: no reference to conflicts, to current affairs but rather a statesman (stateswoman) approach.

However according to Fraga, in recent years the annual speech from the Executive opening the new legislature sessions has targeted the short term, refuting criticism and that was what happened on Friday with President Cristina Fernandez 2013 presentation.

In the first leg of her speech CFK mentioned a cascade of social, economic and educational data, some believable others questionable but more geared to a vision of political propaganda than a government annual report.

The second leg was targeted to refute criticism particularly that referred to the controversial Iran/Argentina memorandum of understanding, approved earlier this week by the government’s majority in Congress, becoming an international accord.

But it was clear that the intention of Cristina Fernandez this year, the mother of all battles is “to reform or democratize the Justice branch”. Although arguments are not new, insistence is and that is why she dedicated much of her political speech to the issue.

However Fraga points out to a difference: in her previous three messages the Argentine media had become the main adversary of Cristina Fernandez and her country project. Now it is the Justice system presented as an obscure corporative grouping.

Summing up, says Fraga a battle speech with not much innovation in content or style, but the confirmation of a new political scenario with some of the anticipated reforms floated previously. But the scenario must also be understood in her ongoing conflict with the media, specially the powerful Clarin group that so far has managed to contain the government’s purpose of dismantling it, by suspending the implementation of the media bill.

Fraga concludes that the confrontation with the Justice branch will become a political conflict of institutional consequences.