Signs of 'Lawfare' in Uruguay as President Faces Court Inquiry.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
The historically harmonious relationship between Uruguay's three branches of government is being put to the test, strangely enough, by a minor incident involving a brief appearance by President Tabare Vazquez at an end-of-year party in the club of the governing Frente Amplio (Broad Front, FA) coalition.
Vazquez has done his best to contain the controversy and yet finds himself at odds with Uruguay's top court, the Suprema Corte de Justicia (SCJ), which characterized an off-the-cuff remark he made at the FA gathering as a violation of the constitutional imperative that bars current heads of state from engaging in "electoral proselytizing."
Three months earlier, the SCJ had delivered another surprise when it ruled that the statute of limitations should apply in a case involving crimes against humanity. In doing so--by treating the case as if it were a common criminal matter--the high court ignored international human rights jurisprudence to which the country and the Vazquez administration, by extension, subscribe.
The principal beneficiary of the judicial ruling is Jose Gavazzo, a former army colonel implicated in hundreds of cases of abduction, disappearance, torture, and/or murder of Uruguayan and Argentine citizens in the 1970s, when both countries were run by civic-military dictatorships.
For some observers, the president's suddenly complicated relationship with the high court mirrors developments in a number of other countries.
"Does this mean that Uruguay is experiencing its first case of the unscrupulous practice of lawfare?" journalist Leandro Grille asked. The term "lawfare" refers to abusive, politically motivated application of the law. Argentine attorney Luis Kon calls it a "modern tool" that "uses judges and prosecutors who've been manipulated by the powers that be and are backed by an enormous media machine to invent legal cases that can then be used to discredit and pursue opposition or grassroots leaders" (NotiSur, Feb. 9, 2018).
On Dec. 26--a month before a court in his country would uphold a corruption conviction, sentencing him to 12 years in prison--former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (2003-2011) also commented on this practice. Its victims, he said, include former Honduran leader Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009), who was deposed in 2009 (NotiCen, July 2, 2009); former Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo (2008-2012), who was ousted in 2012 (NotiSur, July 13, 2012); ex-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of...
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