The Boca elections situation took another turn as Judge Alejandra Abrevaya chose to step aside from the cause. This comes following the club’s appeal against her decision to postpone the elections and a massive demonstration in favor of current vice president and presidential candidate Juan Román Riquelme on Sunday. 

The elections, which were meant to take place on December 3, were postponed due to a complaint filed by opposition candidate Andrés Ibarra and his running mate former president Mauricio Macri. They claim that 13,000 members were illegally fast-tracked to “active” status, enabling them to vote for Riquelme.

The new judge, appointed via lottery, is Analía Romero, temporarily in charge of the 64th Civil Court. If she decides to accept it, she’ll have to decide on the appeal presented by the club on Friday. If not, the National Chamber will have five more business days to decide.

Shortly after the appointment, however, the “Boca es Pueblo” group said via X that Judge Romero was one of around 200,000 Boca members who joined directly as an active member. Her entry was registered on July 5, 2013, when Macri ally Daniel Angelici was the president of the club.

Riquelme led nearly 20,000 Boca fans on Sunday from Parque Lezama to the La Bombonera stadium, asking for elections to be greenlit and rejecting a potential intervention by the national government. 

The fans carried flags and chanted in support of the current vice president with classic football chants. 

“Román is Boca, he’s from the people, and they want to take him down,” Ricardo Tierner, a lifetime Boca member, told state news agency Télam.

Legal representatives from both sides attended a mandatory conciliation last Thursday, reaching no agreement. The club agreed to review the status of around 4,000 alleged fast-tracked memberships and suggested that the elections be held according to the plan, with those people voting separately from the rest. The issue would be void if election results show a greater difference in favor of the winner but the opposition’s representatives refused the proposal.

On Friday, the club’s board decided to appeal Abrevaya’s ruling, claiming her decision was “a nonsense claim that violates all current legal provisions.”If the ruling is struck down, the earliest date the elections could take place is December 17, given that the weekend of December 9 and 10 is unavailable due to Javier Milei’s presidential inauguration. Otherwise, Boca members will have to wait until 2024 for a final decision, since the majority of Argentina’s judiciary will be on recess from December 26 to January 31.

—with information from Télam