These are lawsuits filed by foreign investors against privatized companies that are protected by bilateral treaties that protect foreign investments. So now this Attorney General's Office will have a huge task to deal with such a matter that involves huge sums of money and that serves the General and Public Interest in a primary manner. This issue will require my personal attention. Beyond that, we still do not know how many lawsuits will be filed, or whether they will continue, or whether once the lawsuit is filed, a renegotiation process will begin and thus the process will be suspended. Only then will the Attorney General's Office be able to size and structure time and human resources.
What challenges do you consider important for the Attorney General's Office in this new stage?
The international framework described above is essential. But there is also a challenge in the domestic order. This Office must also clarify a particular phenomenon that we are all familiar with. The State is impoverished and indebted, but we are also all covered by the doctrine of the cloak of guarantees. No one can deny the virtues and benefits of guarantees, but we cannot hide our economic reality either. It would seem then that there are two values, or at any rate two forces – both important – but which certainly come in opposite directions. So there is a contradiction between a hyper-guarantee State and a hyper-indebted State.
We must seek a balance between the right of those under administration to defend themselves and the right of those under administration to have a strong State.
A State that can guarantee your rights. It seems to me that the economic crisis is the fever but not the infection. And the crisis of the State does not begin in state organizations, but where it manifests itself. The crisis that exists in state organizations is the crisis that exists in every citizen.
It is the correlate of the crisis of each citizen. It is like that individual who throws the bottle out of the car window
There is an oversight here, and that is that the State is the sum of all citizens, it is not the government. The latter is the only one that administers public affairs, that is why the President of the Nation is called First Mandatary, the principal is the sovereign, that is to say the people.
This Office has a hard and arduous task, including seeking laws, for example, planning laws on regulating the legitimacy of collective actions, because today state acts are in a very unstable state, because they are subject to the referendum of all the competent federal judges in the country, which takes away stability from state acts, from administrative acts. After the failure of the project of the nineties that was based on decrees of necessity and urgency, administrative acts have lost the presumption of legitimacy imposed by law.
That is why the State act is suspect. That is why this administration and this Attorney General's Office must try to regain the trust and the presumption of legitimacy of administrative acts. We must move forward in this direction, otherwise we will not be able to move forward. It is a very hard, difficult but at the same time strategic and essential task, that is, trying again to ensure that each administrative act has the presumption of legitimacy that was entrusted to it by law.
What level of commitment should prevail, Justice or the interests of the State, given his qualified background as a Federal Judge of the Nation in the Administrative Litigation jurisdiction?
It turns out that, in the face of this change of role, the coherence that I have always had prevails. At least since I took office, I should not have said anything different from what I said in my capacity as Federal Judge. For example, three months before taking up this position, I decided to declare the unconstitutionality of the law that modified the Law of Procedures that prohibits Judges from imposing astreintes on officials. For example, as a Judge, I noticed the non-compliance with a court order, but although that non-compliance was carried out by a state agency, it was also and certainly the person who should comply with the court order who was a person of flesh and blood. And therefore, the person responsible for that omission was the official himself and not the public agency. And so that is how I ruled and that is how I continue to think, beyond my new position as Attorney General of the Nation.
In reality, it would seem that the question is whether the general interest or the private interest should prevail, but I do not understand it that way. Because, of course, Justice and private interest and justice and the general interest are Justice and the State. There is no contradiction, perhaps there is an order of priorities. For example, every day there are priorities that must be resolved, and this does not mean that one right is curtailed to the detriment of another, but perhaps the priority attention of general interests of greater magnitude that prevail over a particular interest. Because more important interests must be prioritized. For this reason, I understand that the State must protect everyone, determining the priorities, but in the world of being, not in the world of being. If the State does not have the money to satisfy both interests, it must first assist the one that responds to the general interest. But this is not an option to the detriment of the other, it is not that it can choose, but rather it must first attend to the general interest while respecting the particular interest. There is no possible option, the State looks after both.
What is the current structure and plan of the Treasury Attorney's Office?
The Attorney General's Office, in historical terms, has six Directorates, and a School that I wish to pay close attention to, to the point that I intend to meet with the Associations of Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Procedural Law, as well as others that may have responsibilities. I want to give a lot of hierarchy to that academic activity. And it has those two very active Directorates, that of Opinions and the Judicial. The latter is where the Attorney General gives instructions for the state legal services, or else assumes representation. There is some need for personnel due especially to the great demand that has occurred in recent years, but that despite this is working well. At this moment, an Executive Power Decree is being processed for the creation of a Directorate for International Affairs - which has to do with the issues I referred to at the beginning. It is obvious that the Attorney General's Office needs this Directorate due to the importance of all these issues, as well as highly specialized personnel in these matters, because although it has them today, we think that very soon we will have to have more human resources, an aspect that will certainly be resolved in a very short time and that is what I think will happen. But I must also highlight the level of commitment and dedication that the agency's officials have.
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