The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, today expressed his condemnation of the “attack” on the country’s vice president, Cristina Fernández, and declared this Friday a non-working day for society to express “in peace” its rejection of violence.
In a message on national television, the president maintained that the “attack” against the former president is the “most serious event that has happened” since Argentina returned to democracy in 1983.
The Federal Police arrested an armed man on Thursday who was a few meters from the vice president, when she was on the street, at the gates of her apartment in the capital’s Recoleta neighborhood, surrounded by Kirchnerist militants.
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Local television channels showed a man pointing at the vice president, who immediately crouched down in the midst of her escorts.
“A man pointed a firearm at her head and triggered it. Cristina remains alive because, for a reason not yet technically confirmed, the weapon that had five bullets did not fire despite having been triggered,” said the head of Condition.
The president maintained that “such a reality moves the entire Argentine people.”
tense political climate
The incident is part of a climate of strong political tension in Argentina, after on August 22 a prosecutor requested a 12-year prison sentence for Cristina Fernández in the context of the oral trial she faces for alleged irregularities in the award of public works during his Government (2007-2015).
Since then, supporters of the former president have staged a vigil in support of Cristina Fernández at the doors of her apartment, where incidents were also reported last Saturday due to the decision of the capital’s government, headed by the opposition Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, to put up a fence in the place.
“This attack deserves the strongest repudiation of all Argentine society, of all political sectors, because these events affect our democracy. We are obliged to recover the democratic coexistence that has been broken by the hate speech that has been spread from different spaces. political, judicial and media,” said Alberto Fernández.
The head of state asserted that “speeches that promote hate” engender violence.
“We are facing an event that has extreme institutional and human gravity. Our vice president has been attacked and social peace has been altered,” he stressed.
The president said that he decided to declare a national holiday (non-working) this Friday so that “in peace and harmony the Argentine people can express themselves in defense of life, democracy and in solidarity” with the vice president.
“May the shock, horror and repudiation that this fact generates in us become a permanent commitment to eradicate hatred and violence from life in democracy,” he emphasized.
Fernández said that he contacted the judge in charge of the investigation of the facts, María Eugenia Capuchetti, whom he asked to clarify “quickly the responsibilities and the facts” and to “ensure the life of the accused” in detention.
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