Victoria Villarruel's silence on the appointment of Lijo by decree and the mission to block the Ks

Victoria Villarruel prefers to keep the internal dispute with Javier Milei and the presidential entourage on hold and, for that reason, avoided taking a position on the controversial appointment by commission decree of federal judge Ariel Lijo and academic Manuel García-Mansilla to occupy the two vacant positions in the Supreme Court of Justice following the departures of Elena Highton de Nolasco and Juan Carlos Maqueda.

However, after the presentation of Milei's candidates for the highest court, the vice president took a position in one of the few interviews she gave since taking office in December 2023 by questioning Lijo. "I don't know him, but I didn't like how he acted in the Rucci case," Milei's running mate told TN, adding at the time that the magistrate "facilitated" the case investigating the death of the union leader "to be in eternal limbo."

However, when asked about García-Mansilla, the dean of the Faculty of Law at the Universidad Austral, defined him as "a constitutionalist of stature, impressive." She even commented that she consulted him about the scope of the DNU after the President signed decree 70/23, which ended up being rejected by the Senate and is pending treatment in the House of Representatives.

But just days before Lijo was to appear before Congress for the public hearing in which he was to defend his nomination to the Court, Villarruel once again turned things upside down. It was in August of last year and the chosen venue was the College of Lawyers of the City of Buenos Aires, where he not only said that he did not agree with the candidacy of the federal judge because he replaced a woman, but also that he thought it had not been the best choice.

"It is a controversial candidacy and we wanted to have a solid candidate who makes us proud," he said at the time, adding that Lijo is a judge who "has greatly damaged the ties between those who are in favor and those who are against him as a result of his candidacy. " "He would not have the necessary credentials. A judge of the Supreme Court of Justice is one of the guarantees of legal security, of trust, of a country and of constitutional control over the acts of the Executive ," he stressed.

The vice president was left out of the negotiations for the appointment of the judges of the Court, which is controlled from the Casa Rosada. The last contact between the Government and Peronism was between the Chief of Cabinet, Guillermo Francos, and José Mayans, when the senator and head of the Union for the Homeland bloc confirmed that they were open to dialogue.

Legislative sources even told this newspaper that the vice president was not worried when last week she had to delay a decision on a possible second session that was going to be convened on Friday to deal with Lijo's list of candidates, which does have a ruling from the Agreements Commission based on the endorsements of the allies and Peronism. It is worth clarifying that in the second meeting of parliamentary work that was held in the Senate to see if the nomination of the federal judge was debated, Villarruel did not participate because he was in charge of the Executive due to Milei's trip to the United States.

The truth is that negotiations with Kirchnerism never prospered and the Government opted for the same path that Mauricio Macri used in 2015 when he appointed Carlos Rosenkrantz and Horacio Rosatti as judges of the Supreme Court on commission, although both finally entered the highest court based on the agreement with the Senate.

Now another negotiation is opening up because Kirchnerism has already announced that it will reject the commission designations of Lijo and García-Mansilla . The federal judge has a ruling from the Agreements Commission, chaired by the Larretista Guadalupe Tagliaferri, but the academic still does not have a report and to reject the lists of the two candidates of the Government, Peronism will need the support of other sectors since it requires two thirds, that is, 48 ​​senators.

If the Union for the Fatherland bloc has perfect attendance, it will add 34 votes. That is, it needs the vote of 14 senators. The PRO, which has 7 seats, had already expressed its rejection of Lijo's nomination, as did the radicals Carolina Losada and Pablo Blanco, who anticipated that he would ask for a session to overturn both lists . Martín Lousteau could also be included, who was critical of the decision of the Casa Rosada, calling Mieli's maneuver a "mess" and stressing that "the Senate cannot allow this (the designation by decree) to be the mechanism."

But it is a mystery how the rest of the block controlled by Corrientes' Eduardo Vischi will position itself, especially after the embarrassment of the last session in which he voted against his own project to create an investigative commission into the scandal of the cryptocurrency $LIBRA.

Within the provincial blocks, Mónica Silva from Río Negro, who answers to Governor Alberto Weretilneck, and Alejandra Vigo, who belongs to Unidad Federal, had already expressed their support for the vacancies to be filled by women. Meanwhile, Francisco Paoltroni, who was expelled from his bench for campaigning against the candidacy of the federal judge, will surely vote with the Government's candidates. Attention will be focused on how the two senators from the Frente Renovador from Misiones and the two from Santa Cruz who will go for their own negotiation position themselves, who will be key to defining.