The event is from State. It takes place at the government headquarters, Casa Rosada, and will pay tribute, on the International Day of Human Rights, to victims of the military dictatorship (1976-1983). In Argentina, the main celebration for that date is the awarding of the Azucena Villaflor prize (a mother of a disappeared person who was thrown into the Rio de la Plata for asking too many questions about her son’s whereabouts) to prominent human rights defenders this year. As the policies of searching for the disappeared and repairing the crimes of repression are exemplary in this country, this is an important date, and one that celebrates advances in these measures every year.
Nothing in the above description, however, should link this tribute by a State to victims of the dictatorship’s abuses with the country’s current party politics, correct? Yes correct. But, only if this country is not Argentina…. What we will see this Friday (10) in Plaza de Mayo, will be a Peronist party, even after this political force has been defeated in the last legislative elections, and of there is, today, an important friction between the two groups that are in power within Peronism. One, which concentrates real power, that of President Alberto Fernández. Another, who has more political capital, is Cristina Kirchner. So far, Cristina has carried out the judicial reforms that she had up her sleeve, keeping out of prison, selecting ministers, intervening to correct the course of domestic and international politics, and there is only one major difference with Fernández: the agreement with the IMF .
While Fernández wants to reach an agreement, a restructuring of payments, Cristina does not see this as a priority, she sees greater importance in extending terms and privileging the increase in social spending to contain the impact of the pandemic on the economy.
These are not the only differences between the two leaders today. Kirchnerists, who are more radical and who follow Cristina, see Alberto as a mild, non-combative president who created embarrassing situations because of his whims. One of them, having allowed the party of his wife, Fabiola, to take place in times of severe restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic. Another, having passed the vaccination line to several friends.
To trim the edges of their speeches and return to seeming a single, victorious bloc within Peronism in a worn-out government, Alberto and Cristina are committed to making December 10, a day of democracy and human rights, as well as a day when two years of his peculiar government are commemorated, a party.
A party party on the state stage, with state money and state communication apparatus. A campaign event in which there are no invited opponents, the flags welcome to the square will be only the Peronists, and which in turn will also go against the sanitary measures in force in the country, which discourage agglomerations, with cases of new ones contaminated by the coronavirus in increase. If there is any doubt, just watch the video of the convocation, in which Cristina’s son, deputy Máximo Kirchner, shouts: “I call you to tear up the square with joy.” Maximo is the leader of Kirchnerist youth militant groups.
The Ômicron variant will certainly thank the gratuitous strength for its dissemination offered by Kirchnerism.
It is at this party that former Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva and former Uruguayan president José “Pepe” Mujica will be present. The Brazilian, in turn, also motivated by his electoral campaign, and certainly happy to see that, in the world, he is still seen as a superstar politician, as is the case with Mujica outside Uruguay. Both within their home countries face strong opposition. On tour through neighboring countries, they cause a furor in the media and the public.
The speech to unite Lula and Cristina has been that of the two as victims of “lawfare”, although the former president has managed to press for her more than 9 initial cases to fall, one by one, without having to spend a day in jail so far.
Alberto, on the other hand, struts about the support he gave Lula when he was in prison, going to visit him in Curitiba. “I will now go wherever Lula goes, I have to be by his side,” he says. The photos of the three together will certainly earn political credit for all three. A little further from Praça de Mayo, but no less important, the images are obviously intended to irritate Jair Bolsonaro, who would hardly fill a square with militants in another country.
Bringing in Lula is also a way of protecting himself from opposition criticism, which could arise from the fact that public money and state apparatus are being used for a party party. But attacking an event in which Lula is present also has a political cost for the opposition in Argentina. With that, the party can take place without asking the appropriate questions.
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