The vice-president of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, sentenced this Tuesday (6) to six years in prison for corruption and fraud against the state, has again accused the judiciary of persecution and said that she will not be a candidate for any position in the elections of the year. next. The politician spoke for more than an hour in a live broadcast on social media from her Senate office.
“This sentence is the result of ‘lawfare’, of an action by the Judicial Party, of the mafia of the parallel state”, affirmed the vice-president after being informed about the sentence determined by the court of Comodoro Py. The speech repeats political arguments in the weeks leading up to the trial, even presented in an interview with Sheet🇧🇷
Cristina also mentioned a statement by President Alberto Fernández, on Monday (6), in which he announced the opening of an investigation into an alleged trip to the south of the country that would have been secretly made by a group of media entrepreneurs, prosecutors and judges.
She named several of them and claimed they were part of the same “mafia” that convicted her — among them Julián Ercolini, the judge who conducted her case. In part of an exchange of messages that showed, without clarifying the origin of the material, the magistrate appears supposedly advising the group on how to act so that the trip was not investigated.
Cristina also harshly criticized Argentine journalism, stating that the newspapers La Nación and Clarín, two of the country’s main vehicles, agreed on how stories about her would be published. Naming reporters, she said they “don’t report, they don’t do journalism, they do politics”.
With reproductions of conversations that she showed to the screen, the vice president even made direct accusations to the directors of both newspapers.
In one of the chats, people who were supposed to be on the trip —members of the top vehicles, businessmen and officials of the Buenos Aires administration, from the opposition— mentioned agreements on what they would say, how they would get rid of ongoing lawsuits against them and acquaintances, and discussed strategies to form a sympathetic majority in Congress.
Cristina cried, affirmed that “she will never be a mascot of power” and that in a system that allows the existence of what she calls a “Judicial Party and a parallel State”, she would no longer be a candidate – that she would rather go to prison.
This Friday’s conviction, however, should not result in his arrest anytime soon. First, because there is still an appeal; second, because she has immunity for the positions of vice president and leader of the Senate. The special forum can only be overthrown through an impeachment process in Parliament. Even so, this would only happen when all instances of appeal were exhausted, the Supreme Court being the last of them.
The policy further stated that the objective of those who convicted her is not to put her in jail. “The real condemnation they want is that I no longer run for election or that I die with a bullet in the head. I say to these that I prefer to go to prison.”
The statement refers to the attack she was targeted at the beginning of September, whose suspected participation she claims to have ties to the opposition led by former president Mauricio Macri. About the 2023 elections, the expectation was that Cristina would be a candidate for some office – if elected, she would renew her immunity.
In Tuesday’s statement, however, she said she will not be involved in the election. “I will not be a candidate, in December 2023 I will not have a forum.”
For the time being, its political force, the Peronist Frente de Todos alliance, has not defined who will run to succeed Alberto Fernández, but the current vice-president is one of the candidates, alongside the president himself, the Minister of the Interior, Wado de Pedro, and the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kiciloff. The primaries for that poll are expected to take place in August 2023.
This Tuesday, outside the court of Comodoro Py and the Senate, where supporters of the policy were concentrated, the cry was “Cristina president”.
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