Governor Gustavo Melella's administration appears to have entered a labyrinth of procedural errors from which it cannot, or does not know how to, extricate itself. In a new chapter of this saga of incompetence, the president of the Provincial Port Authority (DPP), Roberto Murcia , attempted a desperate maneuver: to recuse Federal Judge Federico Calvete without cause . The result was a resounding rejection that not only confirms the provincial government's isolation but also sends a second case to the "limbo" of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation .

An empty recusal to hide the defeat

Roberto Murcia's presentation is, technically, nonsensical. Attempting to remove the judge when he had already ruled the local court incompetent in the main case ( brought by Melella himself ) can only be understood as an attempt to delay the inevitable or to find a judicial scapegoat to justify the dispossession of the port.

Both Judge Federico Calvete and the acting prosecutor , Fernando Rota , were very clear: there are no grounds for the recusal . The Provincial Prosecutor's Office (DPP) was trying to remove the case from the very person who had already told them that the proper office for filing a complaint was not Ushuaia, but the City of Buenos Aires . This latest setback confirms that the political structure of the Port Authority is as lost in the courts as it is in the operational management of the dock.

The "Mirror Effect" and the trip to the Court

The most serious aspect of this ruling (Case No. FCR 719/2026) is that Judge Calvete has decided to consolidate this case with the Governor's initial claim. Given the "close connection" and to "guarantee legal certainty," this new case file has also been electronically forwarded to the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation .

With this decision, the Tierra del Fuego government has managed to shield itself from national intervention . Now there are not one, but two cases languishing in the Supreme Court's offices , an institution that takes years to resolve conflicts of this nature. While Melella and Murcia play lawyer in cases that are rejected as "incomplete" or "without cause," the federal interventor, Juan Avellaneda, consolidates national control over the province's most important strategic asset.

The questions that Murcia must answer

This new misstep forces us to delve deeper into questions about the suitability of the officials:

1.    Who advises the DPP? Was this recusal consulted with the study of the $60,000 or was it another initiative of the "orchestra of amateurs" that surrounds the governor?

2.    Useless waste of resources: Each of these failed presentations consumes time and resources of the Fuegian State, only to receive lessons in basic law from the federal justice system.

3.    The complicity of ineptitude: By trying to recuse the judge, Murcia only managed to confirm that they have no technical arguments to refute the ANPyN reports on the broken pilings, the accounting chaos and the diversion of funds to OSEF.

The end of paper resistance

Ushuaia is witnessing the end of a charade. The current administration has exhausted all its legal pyrotechnics. The rejected recusal motion against Murcia is symbolic of a government that prefers to fight with the judge rather than admit that it let the port fall into disrepair through negligence.

Today, the port sovereignty of Tierra del Fuego rests in the hands of a distant Supreme Court, thanks to the accumulated errors of Melella and his cabinet. The port wasn't "stolen" by the Nation overnight; it was handed over in convenient installments of incompetence by officials who, until the very last minute, preferred desperate measures to transparency and effective management.