Argentina’s leftist president, Alberto Fernández, has sparked a row with the country’s highest court and something of an institutional crisis after saying he would reject a decision taken by the court to give a greater proportion of public resources to the city of Buenos Aires.
The country has a system for regulating the distribution of state funds among regions, including the capital, which is controlled by a conservative mayor and has been pushing for a bigger share.
In a ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said the level should be raised from 1.4% of total resources to 2.95%, after being cut by government decree during the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic. city is the richest and most populous region of the country.
Fernández, in a statement late on Thursday, said the decision was unjustified and vowed to ignore it.
“It is an unprecedented, incongruous and impossible to enforce decision,” he said, calling it politically motivated ahead of next year’s general election, and adding that it would hurt other provinces.
Fernández, who has seen his popularity plummet and whose governing coalition was bitterly defeated in last year’s midterm parliamentary elections, said the state would “defy the members of the Supreme Court” and seek to have the decision overturned.
His comments provoked a backlash from both sides, some agreeing with the president that the decision was unwarranted, and others saying that rejecting a Supreme Court ruling sets a dangerous precedent and undermines the justice system.
“The president decided to break the constitutional order, completely violate the rule of law and attack democracy,” said Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, seen as a potential presidential candidate in 2023.
Source: CNN Brasil
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