Unfortunate countries
Don Pedro Sánchez, president of the government, has left us perplexed by announcing that he is considering resigning after a judge opened proceedings against his wife for apparently fragile accusations of corruption, while his supporters are mobilizing and accusing the judge of lawfare, a buzzword.
The English, who have their quirks but who also have a solid and enviable democracy, say that it is unhappy the country that knows the name of its judges because it means that it disputes their decisions and tries to put pressure on them. They are not few.
In Spain, without going any further, we are able to remember without difficulty the names of several judges and also of some prosecutors! With the exception of some "star-judges", which there are also, the blame is usually not theirs but of spectacular cases of political corruption or laws such as the Yes is Yes, which exonerates sex offenders, or the Amnesty that when approved will exonerate prevaricators and coup plotters, and that they, the judges, have no choice but to apply in the midst of considerable public scandal.
In other cases the blame is shared between government and opposition, as is the case with the lack of renewal of the CGPJ. The result leads judges to an undesirable prominence with accusations of politicization of Justice or judicization of politics, while enthusiastic pyromaniacs add fuel to the fire by accusing judges who dare to investigate matters that are not to their liking of lawfare. Making justice depend on the interests of one or the other destroys morality. Cicero said so.
Also in the United States there are judges famous thanks to the political, financial and sexual wanderings of a former president who has been indicted four times for ninety-one crimes, which is an understatement to say the least. Whether he inspired the storming of the Capitol by refusing to acknowledge his electoral defeat, whether he paid for the silence of a young lady with electoral funds, whether he took home top-secret documents, whether he padded his finances, whether he tried to falsify the electoral results by pressuring state authorities?
The more trials, the more popularity of the accused who claims to suffer a witch hunt that reaches the same Supreme Court that these days weighs whether or not the president has full immunity to do whatever he wants. Seriously. The names of those "magnificent nine", who are also for life, are also well known to the Americans who, according to the English saying, must be very unhappy. And more awaits them because the trials of Donald Trump are just beginning.
The Israelis must not be happy either. In the midst of the judicial row over Bibi Netanyahu's attempt to get his hands on the Supreme Court to take away its powers (Bibi is accused of corruption and if he leaves the seat of power he could end up in jail), which had motivated massive street protests because many citizens understood that it violated the separation of powers inherent in any democracy, Hamas launched a terrorist attack that shocked the country because of its savagery and because it revealed its vulnerability.
The Israeli reaction has been disproportionate, and this is an understatement: 34,000 Palestinians killed in six months, half of them children (in Ukraine, the number of civilians killed after two years of war is 10,000), in addition to 75,000 wounded, 1,800,000 displaced persons, massive destruction of homes and hospitals... an unparalleled humanitarian disaster.
This is why the Republic of South Africa has accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which has accepted the claim to Israel's indignation after finding "prima facie evidence". The ICJ judges have not imposed an immediate cease-fire, as the plaintiffs demanded, but have imposed mandatory interim measures that do not seem to be making any impression on the Israelis.
The decision on the merits of the case is uncertain and in any case will take years, but the damage to Israel's image is already done and may have worse consequences than that caused by the Hamas terrorists. Netanyahu does not have it easy: at home he is accused of corruption and outside of war crimes.
Judges must be allowed to do their job without interference and must not be interfered with because they are the guarantors of our democracy and our freedoms. And the more discreet they are and the more quietly we let them act, the better for everyone.
Jorge Dezcallar. Ambassador of Spain