Roads: Cristina's desperate defense now calls for pardons or international courts

Following the Supreme Court's ratification of the corruption convictions in the "Vialidad" case, a large portion of Peronism unified its defense around a single victim of the court's ruling: Cristina Kirchner. None of the other former officials included in this final ruling, which includes prison sentences and perpetual disqualification from holding public office for the crimes committed, are mentioned by the leadership, which decided to focus solely on the former president.

One of the Peronists convicted in the same case, like former Secretary José López, venerated by the regional leaders of the Justicialist Party in his heyday, is not even mentioned in speeches by secondary spokespersons in this plot. He had already been stigmatized by his own party in the past, all after being caught red-handed with bags containing nine million dollars in cash. His case is similar to that of the sudden millionaire Lázaro Báez, one of Néstor Kirchner's closest friends and his business partner in countless transactions that mixed public money with private enrichment: despite proudly claiming to be a member of the orthodox Partido Popular (PJ) and being a central player in the former president's criminal case, there is no corporate or partisan defense for him.

All the arguments put forward in public debate by the Kirchnerist leadership in this case involve only "Cristina" : she alone is the supposed beneficiary of the attempt to "shield" her inevitable prison sentence. The Kirchner-aligned leadership, at least for now, is trying desperate defensive methods, with no legal weight or even contradictory ones.

This unusual situation even extends to the former president's lawyers. They were the ones who let it be known that they will appeal the case before international courts, such as the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), while, at the same time, jurists closely aligned with the Kirchners, such as Raúl Zaffaroni, explained that such a decision "will be useless" because the case lacks the essential grounds for it to be heard in these foreign courts, whose rulings are binding on our country.

The defenses of the Kirchners and their allies are limited solely to politically questioning the ratification of Cristina Kirchner's corruption conviction . Neither she nor her most loyal representatives, such as the leaders of La Cámpora, challenged the documentary or testimonial evidence presented at the public trial in the "Vialidad" case. Not even Kirchner attempted to construct a technical defense during the proceedings. Her lawyer, Carlos Beraldi, had to resort to an ineffective method of cross-referencing legal briefs, while his client evaded adhering to that logic throughout the proceedings.

The former president, for example, consistently used her statements during the preliminary investigation, her right to a defense, to express with words (and even shouts) that she was only the defendant in the trial because she was first president and, in the oral argument, now vice president-elect. On December 6, 2015, Kirchner sat as a defendant before the bench of the Second Federal Oral Court (TOF 2). She did not deny any of the allegations or the evidence that implicated her criminally. She shouted at the three judges, stood up when she was told to, and walked quickly away until another voice was heard asking: "Is the defendant going to answer questions?" It was prosecutor Diego Luciani. Kirchner grew even more enraged, returned to the bench, but without sitting down, took the microphone and raised her voice: "Questions? You are going to answer questions!"

Two years later, facing an imminent conviction, the vice president complained that, according to her, she had not been allowed to speak until the final, dramatic part of the trial. Prosecutor Luciani and the judges took that inquiry for what it was: she did not defend herself or discredit the evidence.

Among other variables that would later complicate matters, Kirchner did not deny the business ties she had with Lázaro Báez. Luciani explained this in his statement. After describing this connection as crucial to the development of what he would identify as a "monumental" corruption scheme, the prosecutor repeated several times that Báez and the Kirchners were "close" friends, who did numerous business deals together, and explained that "this is not disputed in the trial; Cristina Kirchner herself omitted it in her preliminary statement."

Yesterday, with the corruption conviction increasingly close to becoming official, various K-12 leaders presented another type of defense to the press. None of them will be enforceable. They are even contradictory for various reasons.

National Senator and La Cámpora leader Eduardo "Wado" de Pedro made statements intended to pressure the next administration. He encouraged a new president to pardon Kirchner. "The first condition is Cristina's freedom," he said. The leader of the K legislators' bloc in the Upper House, José Mayans, made a direct reference to the "pardon" for the former president: "A possible next administration, if it's Peronist, should pardon Cristina."

The former president was convicted in the "Vialidad" case for committing the crime of fraudulent administration to the detriment of the public administration. The sentence is six years in prison and carries with it a permanent ban from holding public office.

As constitutional scholars from different ideological spectrums have explained, a pardon, in this specific case, is impossible. Daniel Sabsay and Andrés Gil Domínguez, among other prominent legal experts, explained what is obvious to anyone who has studied the power that only presidents can exercise. According to the National Constitution, corruption crimes are comparable to crimes considered attacks on the democratic order . This is also established by international conventions with constitutional status in our country. That is why the Kirchner-Vialidad case can never be "resolved" through a pardon.

The contradiction of the K-12 leadership on this issue is notable. A pardon issued by the Executive Branch, if such a provision can be used legally in this specific case, constitutes a "forgiveness" of the sentence, but it always maintains the admission of the crime. Is La Cámpora seeking a president to free Cristina even if it means she is guilty of corruption, as is the case according to all the courts that heard the "Vialidad" case?

The request for a pardon is, therefore, brutal and demonstrates desperation : the former president has not even been notified of the final verdict against her, and her close associates are already calling for her pardon. The prison labyrinth is beginning to encircle the spokespeople for the K-12 defense.

Yesterday, former Vice President Amado Boudou, who served his prison sentence for corruption in the "Ciccone" case, surprisingly attempted to defend Kirchner by arguing that the conviction against him was due to the establishment of a dictatorial regime aligned with the interests of "capital," as if he hadn't been a member of the right-wing UCeDé or hadn't become a figurehead of anti-capitalism. Perhaps believing he was doing his former boss a favor, Boudou added that the conviction upheld by the Court "was rigged, fake, and televised."

Those with a good memory in the courtroom recalled that when Boudou was called to testify in the "Ciccone" case, both he and the then-Korea administration tried to pressure the judge to allow the defense to be filmed, that is, televised.

These unique defenses were added to others, already repeated by Kirchner herself in the recent and not-so-recent past: attempts to establish that the Supreme Court is seeking to "proscribe" Cristina's candidacy; or that all her misfortunes, more penitentiary than criminal, are due to the fact that democracy no longer exists in Argentina, which is why President Javier Milei is identified as a dictator.

Empty words for Justice.

There are slogans already tried in the past that only refer to slogans that lack any rigor: "Cristina was condemned by the media," "it's all the fault of economic power," "if they touch Cristina, what a mess there's going to be..."

More sophisticated, but also lacking in support, are the concepts that claim the case lacked conclusive evidence. This was exactly the opposite of what all the judges and prosecutors believed, using the mounting evidence to convict the former president in every possible instance.

Whoever repeats these ideas never alludes specifically to specific flaws in the "Vialidad" file or to what has been accumulated in this regard in the oral and public trial on the case.

The grounds for the ruling by the Second Federal Oral Court on Cristina's sentence cover 1,616 pages. The public trial began on May 21, 2019, and concluded on December 6, 2022, with a break due to the pandemic. One hundred and fourteen witnesses appeared in one hundred and twenty-two hearings.

Cristina Kirchner had every procedural guarantee to defend herself. In none of them, never, did she even say this basic, primordial thing: "I'm innocent." Nothing less. Nothing more.