He was not going to work, but he received, on time, his salary of 3.8 million pesos. The law forced her to retire, but she refused. She wanted to ask for a leave when she didn’t reciprocate. The case of Judge Ana María Figueroa became a scandal, but perhaps it reflects a widespread culture in many levels of the State. Work in the public sphere has become increasingly anarchic and disorderly, but it has also moved away from the notions of obligation and norm. Not going to work is considered a right, and failure to comply with rules and commitments has become naturalized.
Days before the “Figueroa case” broke out, La Nación published a news item that could seem minor, but perhaps explains, in essence, the seduction that the idea – certainly dangerous – of entering the country exerts on a part of society today. at the State with a flamethrower or a chainsaw. “Lawyers demand that judges and employees go to work,” was the title of the text signed by Hernán Cappiello. It reported on a note that the Bar Association of the Federal Capital sent to the head of the Court in which it is described that, after the pandemic, the work schedule in the courts was never regularized, where many employees go some days and others No, or they show up to work “according to the needs and priorities” established in each department. “The situation – the note states – causes serious obstacles for the practice of law and for the provision of an adequate justice service.”
The phenomenon to which Buenos Aires lawyers draw attention shows just the tip of an iceberg. Behind this complaint there is a much broader reality, which has ended up configuring, around the State, a network of privileges, inciting and irregularities that distorts the notions of public service, labor responsibility and compliance with the rules. It not only occurs in the Judicial Branch of the Nation, but also in the three branches of the State, and both in the federal sphere and in the provincial and municipal jurisdictions. Lawyers suffer from it, but also notaries, accountants, surveyors, architects and engineers, in a country where – in addition – it is difficult to take a step without a seal, a form or a state authorization. It is suffered, of course, by the merchant, the entrepreneur or the businessman, and also the common citizen, who are trapped in an intricate administrative labyrinth and who all the time feel harassed by a suffocating statism.
Bureaucracy is not a new problem in Argentina. Neither does a certain lateness and heaviness associated with public service. But there was a time when everything was not the same. What judge would have thought of getting paid without working and defying the rules with rampant impunity? A sense of decorum, institutional responsibility, and public commitment governed. Hierarchical positions were accessed by competition; the ranking had not been displaced by the “statute of accommodation”; militancy was carried out in committees, in basic units or in popular athenaeums, not in classrooms, in courts or in public organizations. Prestige and track record were values to take care of. Politics respected career personnel and the State was seen as an institution, not a lair. Today things seem to have reached a phase of extreme decomposition: public offices are conceived as “caves” rather than as offices.. Embassies are administered as “consolation prizes”, not as destinations in the demanding career of foreign service, and many state structures (Anses, Aysa, PAMI or Incaa, to name a few examples) in political jargon are called “ boxes”: they are seen as “spoils”, not as technical organisms. Officials pounce on the organizational charts to complete “the ravioli” – as they call each box in the dialect of the political bureaucracy – with a list of militants, relatives and close friends who will become part of the different “geological layers” of each State. ever more immense, amorphous and ineffective.
The co-option of the State has erased the boundaries between what is public and what is partisan. And that confusion has fostered a cultural detachment from the norm. On some scales, it is plain and simple corruption; in others, privileges and irregularities. It is no longer about that tiring and labyrinthine rhythm of public departments, but about a kind of anarchy in which a sui generis system of “at will” work has been consolidated.
In provinces like Buenos Aires, these deformations have reached astonishing extremes. The Buenos Aires courts seem minuscule, for example, next to what happens in many areas of the Buenos Aires State, where attention to the public is now done through WhatsApp or through cumbersome digital platforms. Meanwhile, organizations have been created – from ministries to undersecretaries, directorates, executing units, commissions and other entities – that do not provide services or have specific powers, but instead campaign for “inclusion”, “equality” or the “gender issue”. ”, among other flags that have become “boxes”. Every day, in addition, the permanent plant swells with a rented militancy that enters “through the window.” The ideas of management and administration were changed to those of colonization and appropriation of the State, as Minister Katopodis boldly displayed yesterday.
If there are powers that work half-heartedly, others do not work at all. The provincial Legislature became a ghost institution. It does not meet, and work on committees practically does not exist. But former Judge Figueroa’s salary could be considered low compared to that of a Buenos Aires deputy or senator. The State made a tacit pact with an immense mass of public employees: it pays little, but demands less. However, this rule has, when it comes to salary, enormous exceptions in the highest rungs of the ladder. The more than 9 million pesos that Cristina Kirchner charges for a double pension are above, yes, but they do not clash too much with the salaries that are paid in the pyramid of some State organizations or companies, where travel expenses, gasoline vouchers are also distributed , representation expenses, tickets, drivers and assistants. How much does the owner of the Afip earn? What is the salary of the Buenos Aires State Prosecutor? How much does the president of Public TV earn? And the president of the Río Santiago Shipyard or a director of Banco Provincia? They are random questions, which could be extended to many other areas and positions that are not on the radar of public opinion. These are questions that perhaps deserve greater transparency.
The public service must be well paid, but it must be of quality. A legislator should be assured a diet proportional to his responsibility, but that should guarantee commitment and dedication, values that are often conspicuous by their absence. Confusing a bench with a scholarship and managing an office like a piñata of positions is, quite simply, a fraud on the State. Of course generalization is always unfair and arbitrary. There are many legislators, judges and officials who honor public service and carry out their duties with enormous amounts of responsibility, seriousness and dedication. But it is inevitable to ask: are they the ones who express the dominant culture? Or do they have to swim against the current?
The Supreme Court of the Nation set an encouraging course last week. He intervened in the face of the challenge of former judge Figueroa with precision and firmness. It was much more than an administrative decision and a resolution on an individual case. It should be read as a message of greater force and thickness: the norm is the norm and no one is above it. Modern democracies and states have been built on that principle.
The Court has a meaning of maximum relevance in the face of the challenges posed by usurpation of the State. Is it solved with flamethrowers or is it solved with the law? A sector of society, which feels cheated, and rightly so, is tempted with the idea of the flamethrower to disrupt this network of privileges, fanfare and disorder. The option of the procedure, the norm and the institutionality sounds little to him. Perhaps the determination and firmness with which the Supreme Court acted is needed so that no one thinks of entering one night with a chainsaw and flamethrower into usurped offices or bureaucratic hideouts. The State should have been administered, not colonized. Now it must be sanitized, not detonated. Will we know how to find the balance?
