Argentina-Peru: Inefficient and Corrupt Justice

The cases of the Argentine vice president, Cristina Fernández, and President Pedro Castillo and his family in Peru demonstrate the corruption that emanates from what they call Justice, supported by an oligarchy and interests that do not benefit the people in the least.

A few Buenos Aires media coincide in pointing out the rejection of a large part of the population of the judicial attempt to try to put the former president in prison, which is not the same in Peru, due to the collusion of those who control the media and try to make it appear that it’s natural that Castillo and his family are sent to jail.

In Argentina, the marriage of the Prosecutor's Office with Macri’s followers is evident, which has done so much damage to the nation, leaving it in debt for life, without judicial accountability. In Peru, the oligarchy has a clear goal: to lock up Castillo and his entire family, while the general public is distracted by the bickering between the Executive and a legislature body controlled by reaction.

This Monday, August 22^nd, prosecutor Diego Luciana, extremely linked to Mauricio Macri, requested 12 years in prison and the perpetual disqualification to hold public office for Fernández de Kirchner in the so-called Vialidad case, which investigates alleged cases of corruption in public works.

Cristina, who never had anything to do with this issue, as President Alberto Fernández assures, is accused of aggravated illicit association as chief, and aggravated fraudulent administration to the detriment of the public administration between 2007-2015, when she was president.

The current vice president, from Congress, said that the trial began with a "fiction" and that it had a script "quite bad, by the way, as well as funny." She stated that the "justice system allows violating all norms" and that "nothing the prosecutors said was proven."

Cristina had already criticized the decision of the Prosecutor's Office on Monday, stating that she was not "before a court of the Constitution, but before a media-judicial firing squad."

Besides listing accusations against prosecutors and politicians, she said that cases like the one that follows discipline politicians. "This is not a trial of Cristina Kirchner, this is a trial of Peronism, this is a trial of the national and popular governments (...) against whom we fight for memory, truth, justice, salary, pensions, public works", and emphasized that point: "Public works, yes, public works were a formidable government management".

Regarding the management, she said: "They ask for 12 years, because they were the 12 years of the best government that Argentina had in recent decades."

And she ended her message with a warning: "They are not coming for me, they are coming for you. For wages, for the rights of workers, retirees, indebtedness, they come for that."

"It was splendid," the President revealed to her inner circle.

All this took place, while thousands of people in Buenos Aires and other cities expressed their support for the vice president and a survey was released and it showed that Justice was the most corrupt institution in the nation, with 70% of those surveyed, followed by the Police, with 65%.

The action against Cristina is part of the still recent judicial negotiations that put Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in prison, in Brazil, to prevent him from achieving the presidency and favor the current president, Jair Bolsonaro; the imprisonment of the Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas (in poor health), and the exile of Rafael Correa, who led the Citizen Revolution in Ecuador for ten years.

That Argentine Justice also illegally retains a Venezuelan commercial plane, at the request of a North American court.

SAME METHOD IN PERU

The open actions of the right against governments considered progressive has been latent in Peru since the beginning of the mandate of Pedro Castillo, who has virtually not been allowed to govern, while the Prosecutor's Office has opened six legal cases against him that involve false allegations and accusations to the family environment, by involving them in the creation of a criminal organization.

Something unlikely to happen in such a short period of time in a family that lives modestly, but nothing is an obstacle for the media controlled by the economic and financial power that feels threatened by a government that fights monopolies and oligopolies.

If in Argentina the head of Justice obeys Macri’s ideas, in Peru the nation's prosecutor, Patricia Benavides Vargas, has been imposed, who is investigating the President of the Republic, Pedro Castillo, for allegedly committing various crimes.

Benavides is accused of having violated articles 146 (numbers 2 and 3) and 159 (number 2) of the Political Constitution of Peru, by committing the crimes of abuse of authority and obstruction of justice to the detriment of the State.

She abruptly and arrogantly removed the supreme prosecutor Bersabeth Revilla Corrales, who was in charge of the investigation of the superior judge Emma Benavides Vargas, sister of the Prosecutor of the Nation.

Likewise, she removed the prosecutor Pablo Sánchez from leading the special team in charge of investigating the "Los Cuellos Blancos del Puerto" case, and in his place appointed Jorge Luis Díaz Cabello, temporary provisional superior prosecutor of the Central Lima Fiscal District.

In other words, and as she has done on other occasions, she prefers to appoint a provincial prosecutor instead of a titular supreme prosecutor, whom she could easily remove when she sees fit.

In addition, Benavides has openly expressed that her main mission is to apprehend a president accused of creating a criminal organization, in which, she assures, his family is involved.

A broad violation of the law, which has caused the bench of the left-wing Peru Libre party to request that the Prosecutor of the Nation be imposed a sanction of disqualification from public office for eight years and be removed from her current position.

In the midst of this serious situation of open illegality, the president's sister-in-law, Jennifer Paredes, is accused of the crimes of criminal organization, money laundering, and aggravated collusion, for which she could receive a minimum sentence of 23 years, according to prosecutor Jorge García Juárez, from the pretentiously called Special Team against the Corruption of Power, led by Benavides.

During the preventive detention hearing, the prosecutor explained that, according to the thesis of the Public Ministry, Jennifer Paredes would be the "lobbyist" and Lilia Paredes, the President's wife, the coordinator, all of which was described as superficial by the defense, which pointed out that nothing in the accusation could be sustained.

A BIG MAFIA

In statements to the Expreso newspaper, political analyst Agustín Figueroa considered that current efforts to fight corruption are insufficient, he harshly criticized the Peruvian justice system and rejected that companies like Odebrecht still hold power in the country.

Figueroa stated that the Peruvian State and justice are "soft" and rejected that the Brazilian construction company continue contracting with Peru. When asked if he considers that Peruvian justice is selective, Figueroa went further and stated that "justice in Peru is inefficient and corrupt."

And he argued his position, pointing out that "different (judicial) cases have different times: it’s not the same the prosecutor seeing Keiko Fujimori case as the one who sees the Alan García case or the one who sees the Alejandro Toledo, and Ollanta Humala case. It’s a fallacy."

"Now we are only looking at a very small thing and not at the entire universe of corruption," said the specialist, assuring that this is a consequence of political underdevelopment.

“Basically we have to carry out a process of purifying the system, and that is more than these little anecdotes that we are trying now,” he added, and expressed in this regard that a reform should go through a process where new laws are passed and the electoral system must be corrected, which, in his opinion, is ran by magistrates.

"The justice system is a great power that has become a great mafia," he reiterated. Figueroa also stressed that it’s striking that high-level people, with serious accusations and convincing evidence, are not imprisoned.

Finally, he affirmed that the fact that some politicians or prosecutors are accused "does not mean that corruption is being overcome"; He added that "Odebrecht is still strong" and assured that "there are a lot of Brazilian companies included" that "have not yet been touched."

Faced with this, the analyst urged politicians not to focus "only on the small" and take the matter more seriously, leaving aside the debate between the Executive and the Legislative powers.