Court lifts intervention order against leading Argentine opposition party

[sandensea]

A National Electoral Chamber court in Argentina voided an intervention ordered four months ago against the country's leading opposition party, the Justicialist Party (PJ).

The ruling thus restores the party's legitimate leadership, which had been elected in a 2016 convention but removed by a court order issued on April 10.

The April 10 intervention order was widely seen as being made at the behest of President Mauricio Macri, who polls show losing his reelection bid next year to any of a number of potential PJ nominees.

"We've been saying all along that the government's hand was behind this," Congressman José Luis Gioja, the party's president, said shorty after today's ruling was announced. "Justice has been done."

Gioja's suspicion appeared to be confirmed by the court's naming of union boss Luis Barrionuevo, a staunch Macri supporter who's no longer affiliated with the PJ, as interim head.

The judges issuing today's ruling, Alberto Dalla Vía and Santiago Corcuera, condemned Judge María Servini de Cubría's April 10 ruling as "political" in nature. The prosecutor who brought Gioja's case before the court, Jorge di Lello, considered her ruling "capricious and arbitrary."

Servini de Cubría herself admitted in an interview last year that under Macri "pressure on judges has been unprecedented." She has sat on the federal bench since 1975.

No one to spare

Gioja, 68, called on the party's diverse and often conflicting factions to "work hard to unite the party."

The Justicialist Party - so named for its social justice platform - was founded in 1945 as the Labor Party by the late populist leader Juan Perón, and has long been beset by deep divisions between its left and right wings.

"Personal ambitions must be set aside if we are to achieve our common goal: ensuring Macri will no longer rule Argentina as of December of next year," Gioja reminded supporters. "We can't spare anybody."

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pagina12.com.ar%2F132523-el-final-de-la-intervencion-del-pj&edit-text=

José Luis Gioja (center), president of the Justicialist Party (PJ), and fellow PJ leaders celebrate today's ruling restoring the party's legitimate authorities.

The ruling voided an earlier order imposing a Macri backer as head.

[Judi Lynn]

1. December, 2019, can't get here nearly soon enough. Very glad to learn JP has won, for the moment.

A year and a half away, the election looks like a really big deal, since Macri seems to be getting intense. I hope time will prove he had every reason to get whipped up to a froth so soon.

Best wishes every day to the Justicialist Party. Help is sorely needed to prevent a second term of this greedy, hateful, unrelenting, brutal nastiness.

[sandensea]

2. Imagine having a judge install Jared Kushner as DNC head, b/c he was "once a Democrat"

That's basically what they had here.

Like Jared Kushner, Luis Barrionuevo is completely in the tank for the opposing party now; he even forces unionized bar and café employees to keep the tv set on Clarín's TN cable news (Argentina's Fox News equivalent).

Nor was this the first time Barrionuevo had a powerful post handed to him by a right-wing potentate.

His very post as head of the Culinary Workers' Union was taken by force from its previous leadership and handed to him back in '75 by José López Rega - the infamous fascist adviser to the hapless (some would say clueless) Isabel Perón.

Isabel, like Macri, was exceedingly superstitious - something López Rega used to burrow his way into the Peróns' inner circle in the late 1960s, tragically for Argentina.

Barrionuevo is basically a living holdover from that Godawful era ('75/'76). More recently, he was charged with defrauding PAMI (Argentina's Medicare) out of over $100 million; the case became stalled in court once Macri took office.

Once Macri leaves office, my guess is that Barrionuevo will hot-foot it to Florida.

Who knows? He might even become good friends with Rick Scott - one Medicare fraudster to another?