With the start of his trial this Monday before the Criminal Chamber of the Federal Supreme Court, Álvaro Garcia Ortiz made a shameful debut: becoming the first Democratic Attorney General to be tried for an alleged crime.
In your case, one of revealing secrets, punishable by up to four years in prison, a fine and which could cost you your job.
If this unprecedented situation could occur, it is because García Ortiz persisted in arriving at the oral hearing in possession of his position as attorney general.ignoring requests for dismissal from broad sectors of the prosecutor’s career.
And he not only attended the first session of the trial as head of the State Attorney General’s Office: he made use of all the formal prerogatives that this condition confers on him.
He wore the toga and all the attorney general’s attire.
Due to his status as a jurist, he held the position alongside the State Attorney, and not in the dock.
He entered the building through the main door of the Federal Supreme Court, reserved for authorities.
And he was applauded by his subordinates as he left his appearance.
Of course, all this dramaturgy is not causal. It’s a way of staging an institutional clash between the State Attorney General’s Office and launch a challenge to the Supreme Court.
But, with this, García Ortiz only confirms the impression that the majority of citizens have when representing him as an instrument at the service of the Government of Pedro Sanchez.
Because it is the president who, having ratified to the end his support for the Public Ministry, is challenging the Supreme Court through an intermediary, thus feeding his narrative about the politicization of part of the judicial power in a conspiracy against the Government.
Both Ferraz and Moncloa have launched a smear campaign in recent months over the magistrate’s “shameful” instruction Anjo Hurtadowith the aim of delegitimizing the judicial process and portraying García Ortiz as a victim of persecution with spurious motivations and “without any evidence”.
On the contrary, the Spain of Pedro Sánchez, the highest representative of the Public Ministry, responsible for guaranteeing legality and the rights of citizens, He is an alleged criminal accused of leaking confidential information about a taxpayer.
But the institutional anomaly is twofold. Because it is the Government that, subverting the balance of powers scheme, seeks to persecute the conduct of judges.
García Ortiz categorically denied having been the one who leaked the incriminating email from Ayuso’s boyfriend’s lawyer to the press. But regardless of whether he is acquitted or convicted (in which case the Government would transform him into a martyr of legal war), The damage to the institution will now be irreparable.
Because the credit of the State Attorney General’s Office lies in its independence. And it is precisely the image of impartiality that García Ortiz irreparably damaged, by persisting in the exercise of his judiciary despite being immersed in a judicial process.
It is clear that the Public Prosecutor’s Office has subordinated the good name of the institution it still manages to the obstinacy of cleaning up its own.
But it became evident once again that The Government has been more concerned with contesting justice and winning the story of judicial persecution than with the reputation of the Public Ministry. The institutional aberration that the subordination of the entire state machinery to personal and partisan interests leads to reached its apotheosis in this case.