The President of the Republic announced his intention to create a ministry of justice and human rights in our country. A few months ago, the current Deputy Secretary of the Presidency, Jorge Díaz, defended the creation of the said ministry, understanding that this would be “key to the country's institutionality”. But the question we must ask ourselves is whether we really need more State to have more justice. Often, what politics presents as a solution ends up being part of the problem or aggravating it, something that we have been used to for decades.
The real problem of the judicial system is not ministerial, we have lengthy processes, saturation of court files, lack of budget (in any case this is not a solution in itself, fair, that is to say, since there are plenty of examples that a greater allocation of resources has been irrelevant to the improvement of the service, such as education and the police) some in which equality before the law is violated, we have excess regulations that make enforcing the law a daunting task and that results in the fact that judges, become, in fact and unintentionally, bureaucratic agents who control the offices of the executive and parliament, instead of fulfilling the enormous and vital function of imparting justice, that is, of giving
everyone their own.But the problem we have is not being corrected with more red tape.
The government's idea is to create a new ministry that coordinates policies related to justice, human rights, the prison system, public defender and access to justice, among others, given that there are multiple dispersed organizations and this generates inefficiencies. In other words, a kind of governing body that is a synthesis of what is dispersed and can grant uniformity
of action.
It is also alleged that all Mercosur countries have a Ministry of Justice, and that Uruguay should “modernize its institutions”. However, just because something exists in other countries doesn't mean it's a good idea. Many neighboring countries have price controls, regulations, bankrupt public companies, and failed retirement systems, and that doesn't mean we should copy
them.In Uruguay, in the last forty years, new ministries have been created in every government that has passed: the Ministry of Tourism, Housing, Social Development, the Environment, and now the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights. The size of the State has not stopped growing since the democratic reopening, and this is not free, it has a direct impact on people's pockets, because capital is consumed from the only sector that generates wealth, which is the private sector, to finance this expenditure that has not served and is useless. And the justice ministry is no exception.
The problem of the lack of coordination that is argued to justify its creation is precisely created by the excess of bureaucracy, which generates more regulations, more control mechanisms, more spending and which ultimately generates new deficiencies and new problems that take us to the starting point.
