Argentine President Seeks Impeachment Of Supreme Court Justices Over State Funding

In a controversial move likely triggered by a recent decision regarding state funding, the President of Argentina on Tuesday is seeking to impeach members of the country’s Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice.

Fernandez, in a statement to the press, said that he and various provincial governors have signed a request for the impeachment of Supreme Court President Horacio Rosatti and other members of the court, escalating the current fight that the President has with the judiciary, according to Reuters.

Though he did not specify in the statement what led to the escalation between the two parties, the move comes after Fernandez was forced to follow a court decision that increased the state funding of the city’s capital Buenos Aires to pre-pandemic levels, Al Jazeera reported.

Fernandez said at the time that he will refuse to comply with the decision which increases the funding of the city from 1.4% back to the previous 2.95%. Many allies said that the funding decrease during COVID-19 had allowed them to reallocate funds to needier provinces and that they had been able to increase the salaries of law enforcement officials because of this.

But after Buenos Aires’ Mayor Rodriguez Larreta accused him of “[breaking] the constitutional order, completely [violating] the rule of law,” Fernandez backtracked on the refusal to comply and said that they will be looking for other legal methods to attack the decision.

The push for impeachment by Fernandez is seen to be an audacious move by many, especially as the President claimed that the reasoning behind the impeachment is over the “poor performance of his duties” that Rosatti has exhibited during his term as Chief Justice.

Despite this, Fernandez and his coalition Frente de Todos are unlikely to push through a decisive vote to remove Rosatti and other justices off the bench as the former lacks the two-thirds majority needed to be able to vote them out due to the recent losses of the coalition at the 2021 midterms.

Rosatti has yet to comment about the impeachment attempt being made against him.