NewsLatin AmericaThe Argentine political unity after the attack against Kirchner cracks

The Argentine political unity after the attack against Kirchner cracks

Barely two days after the attempted assassination of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, senators from all political forces returned to the upper house to pose together and approve a joint statement repudiating the attack. In a country as polarized as Argentina, it was an unprecedented sign of unity in the face of an unprecedented act of violence in almost four decades of democracy. This Saturday, a day and a half after that, it has been more difficult to repeat the script in the Chamber of Deputies. The political crack has become evident again this Saturday with the rapid withdrawal of the Macrista Republican Proposal (Pro) party from the chamber and the criticisms poured into it by opposition legislators during the extraordinary session.

The ruling Frente de Todos produced a repudiation text in which it echoed one of the most repeated theses by Kirchnerism since Thursday: hate speech that “emerges from different political, cultural, judicial and media spaces” have been the breeding ground that has led to the attack. It was necessary to eliminate that reference so that the main opposition bloc, Together for Change, voted in favor of the declaration. By deleting that paragraph, the left, on the other hand, chose to change its positive vote to abstention.

“The Honorable Chamber of Deputies of the Nation expresses its strong repudiation of the assassination attempt against the vice president and twice president of the Nation, Dr. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner”, begins the text approved by the Lower House. The document expresses the solidarity of the legislators with the vice president and her family and demands “the prompt and complete” clarification of what happened.

Cristian Ritondo, president of the Republican Proposal in the Lower House argued for the withdrawal of the macrista legislators from the premises, considering that it is not “the place to determine those guilty of a crime”, nor is the street. “The Judiciary is the only one that has the duty to investigate, judge and sentence. We do not want this very serious fact to be used with the aim of generating more friction, assigning culprits and much less becoming a forum to attack the political opposition, the judiciary and the media, as we have unfortunately been hearing in the last few hours”, Ritunda pointed out.

The discrepancies between the partners of Together for Change continue. Legislators from the Radical Civic Unit and the Civic Coalition remained on their benches and from there they combined messages of support for the vice president and for democracy with warnings to the government not to seek political gain from the attack. “Security cannot be a political carrion issue. We come to defend democracy without overreacting”, affirmed the radical Mario Negri.

One of the most anticipated speeches was that of Javier Milei, leader of the extreme right-wing party Libertad Avanza, because until now he had not condemned the attack. Milei broke the uncomfortable silence that he maintained to express his repudiation of “all kinds of violence.” However, he joined other opponents in criticizing President Alberto Fernandez for having declared a national holiday the day after the attack. “Politics miserably used a criminal act (…) It became so Dantesque that they declared a holiday. Can someone tell me where the holiday for the victims of the Once massacre is? Or when prosecutor Nisman was killed? Or in the attack against the Embassy of Israel?”, questioned the legislator.

Despite the criticism, the session took place in a much more moderate tone than previous sessions and there was consensus in demanding that the Justice go to the bottom to clarify what happened.

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Source: EL PAIS

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