By Luis Nieto

The ongoing trial against Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) has exhausted the round of accusation and defense in the so-called “Roadway Case”, which was presented over nine public sessions. The Oral Federal Criminal Court No. 2 is expected to issue its ruling before the end of 2022. The prosecution has requested a 12-year prison sentence for CFK, the inability to hold public office again and to return the amount of the fraud, which prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola set in 970 million dollars.

The vice president faces ten judicial processes, of which five reached the oral trial instance. The first of them was the one already mentioned in the previous paragraph. It will be followed by the following four files: Hotesur , Corruption Notebooks (notebooks with records on the corruption of the Kirchner couple), Signing of the Memorandum with Iran, and Los Sauces.

These ten causes that await the current vice president have altered Argentine politics in such a way that when journalism asks «Who governs Argentina?», the vast majority of those consulted do not respond with the logic that there is a government. In fact, there is a president who does not preside, and a vice president who does not act. They don’t even have a personal relationship with each other. Cristina Fernández de Kirchner only works to avoid being crushed by the enormous weight of those ten processes that have already begun to acquire public status. All her artillery seems to be dedicated to questioning the independence of the Judiciary, which she accuses of being at the service of economic power and the press, as executors of imperial policy. A typical topic of the decade of the sixties that only tries to deny the division of powers of the Rule of Law.

Meanwhile, the opposition, grouped in Juntos por el cambio (Together for Change), which governed between 2015 and 2019, seems to be the only option for Kirchnerism before the November 2023 elections. The figures of the current government, with an inflation that will close the year at 100%, and 40% poverty, cannot be worse. It is the image of a government that seems to have had the sole mission of shielding CFK from the possibility of being sentenced by the courts. Faced with the imminence of several adverse rulings, the members of the cabinet begin to think about individual destinies, gradually moving away from what will be a true criminal tsunami. There is a systematic resignation of ministers, who try to return to their provinces, with the aspiration of competing more successfully in their own territories.

The government that results from the next elections will have a very difficult time. It will not have any possibility of receiving international credit, and will have before it the reality of an impoverished country, which will not have a single day of respite, from the first day onwards. Lifting almost half the population out of poverty is going to be the priority. The trauma that this sudden decline has generated in Argentines is one of the worst consequences. Politics has become a dirty word. «Politicians», in the consideration of citizenship, are one of the main causes of impoverishment and job destruction.

Surely, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will not go to jail for having parliamentary privileges, and when she is exposed to the elements she will have the benefit of age to, if so indicated by the Justice, serve her sentence in house arrest. But that is not the most important thing, despite what a good part of public opinion may say.

In 1985, President Raúl Alfonsín referred to justice the three Military Juntas that subjected Argentines to a systematic violation of Human Rights from the coup d’état of March 24, 1976, until President Raúl Alfonsín take office in December 10, 1983, marking a historical event. A civilian government, democratically elected by the citizens, prosecutes the three Military Juntas that usurped the government, and held it for seven years, leaving behind an approximate balance of 30,000 deaths and an unsustainable economic situation. The message was received by the Armed Forces. Every time they get close to the coup temptation, they will end up in jail sooner or later.

40 years later, Argentina, a country rich in natural resources like few others, with intelligent and hard-working people, is facing one of the biggest crises in its history.

Yes, exactly 40 years ago, the Argentine people began a redemocratization process that President Alfonsín carried out with the highest democratic sense. Prosecutors Daniel Luciani and Sergio Mola have started a trial that could mark the end of the State as loot, as a terrible Latin American custom. If the decision of the Argentine Judiciary to clearly clarify the responsibilities in the face of corruption is confirmed, that country will not only benefit from what democracy is capable of guaranteeing modern societies, but it will also be the example that impunity, later or sooner, it’s over. We must be attentive to the process that is being followed in Argentina, and make it the path of the region to leave totalitarianism behind.

This is the first of several trials awaiting the Kirchner family. The volume of corruption detected by the accusation is such that only for this first trial, prosecutors Luciani and Mola ask for 12 years in prison. This will be the most important sentence, both for her and for the rest of those involved in the criminal plot, and it will have a similar effect to the 1985 trial, in which both, the prosecutor Julio César Strassera and his deputy, Luis Moreno Ocampo, demonstrated before Argentina itself and the world, that no one can feel unpunished forever. To what extent has the condemnation of the Military Junta that subjected Argentines to serious violations of their rights not been the brake that the armies have today, and the governments that abandon their constitutional duties and the scope of the laws, in a subcontinent always threatened by absolutist temptation? Argentina is facing another historical challenge: continue financing crime or condemn the endemic corruption that takes advantage of the transitory power that democracy grants, like the Kirchner family and its allies.

This trial can mark a before and after, both for Argentina and for Latin America, that justice may take time, but it comes, and it will not only make them pay with the loss of freedom, but also with the loss of ill-gotten wealth.