President Macri’s picks Inés Weinberg de Roca for attorney general post

Her name has long been rumoured as the presidential preference, but now it’s official. In a Wednesday evening television interview President Mauricio Macri announced that Inés Weinberg de Roca, the President of Buenos Aires City’s Superior Tribunal of Justice, the capital’s highest court, is his choice to replace Alejandra Gils Carbó as attorney general (procurador general de la nación).

In the interview Macri explicitly said that he picked her because she is “not contaminated by Comodoro Py,” referring to the tension with the federal judiciary over its Cristóbal López ruling. Another reason why Macri is believed to seek her appointment is that her City rulings have tended to favour police empowerment in crimefighting, as well as taking a firm stand against drug-trafficking. The two also mix in similar social circles.

A further asset is that Weinberg enjoys the support of coalition ally Elisa Carrió, a decisive voice in judicial matters. Yet the approval of Macri and Carrió is not everything – the appointment needs to clear the Senate where Peronist leader Miguel Angel Pichetto has called for a “very solid and high-level candidate” and there is no sign that she enjoys Peronist support.

The post has been vacant ever since Gils Carbó – under constant fire from Macri ever since his 2015 presidential campaign on accusations of being a Kirchnerite lackey – finally resigned last October with Deputy Attorney-General Eduardo Casal standing in. At the time Gils Carbó was formally accused of the irregular purchase of the department’s offices.

For Weinberg, this is not the first time she has been handpicked by Macri – she owes her present post to being nominated by the then-City mayor in late 2012, despite objections from the national Treasury Prosecutor’s office that Weinberg had been guilty of nepotism while a City appeals court judge, as well as accepting paid work from the United Nations (connected with the prosecution of crimes against humanity in Rwanda and the Balkans).

Born in this city in 1948, Weinberg has an international reputation. She has been a judge in various courts since 1992, practising as a lawyer in the preceding two decades. She describes herself as the daughter of Holocaust survivors who escaped Nazi Germany.

More controversial is her husband Eduardo Roca, a diplomat who served the 1966-70 and 1976-83 military dictatorships as their ambassador at the Organisation of American States (OAS) and UN respectively, as well as a spell in Washington DC.