Alberto Fernández achieved something that seemed impossible: he went from political insignificance to being consecrated as the most opaque, suspect and abandoned democratic ex-president of the last forty years.
Fernández’s slide into hell hides encrypted messages that his recipients prefer to ignore for now.
The last president of Kirchnerism is a surprising man. Few politicians like him have been in the right place at the right time to achieve an objective they had not imagined. And none of them found themselves in an uncomfortable situation like the one he is currently facing, like Fernández. All in just over five years.
Like a spring that suddenly releases its force, his days in power have turned these hours into hell for Alberto Fernández
Only Cristina Kirchner could have thought of putting Fernández at the head of the list of candidates that she chose to join from second place, once she saw that Mauricio Macri had a slim future in the presidency. Aware that her own name was no longer enough to win an election, the head of Peronism chose the leader she imagined to be more obedient and with less capacity for self-management.
He was wrong on both counts. Fernández wanted to govern on his own, pretending to listen to the vice president while exposing his political blunders with the intention of building his own space of power.
Cristina never tolerated her candidate’s attempts at independence and will never forgive him for not doing enough to get her out of the serious accusations of corruption that have already begun to turn into convictions.
The vice president’s misfortune did not help Fernández, who was plunged into ineffectiveness after abusing the docility of the Argentines during the pandemic. He left office weaker than he entered, with no support other than that of a tiny group of close associates.
Like a spring that suddenly releases its force, his days in power have turned these hours into hell for Alberto Fernández.
Peronism, and Kirchnerism in particular, point to him as the sole person responsible for having created the conditions for having to abandon power, defeated by a candidate born of social discontent. The failure and hypocrisy of the speeches and policies of that government today magnify that intolerance.
The country has just confirmed that the president who declared his feminism and created the first Ministry of Women is accused of beating his wife in Quinta de Olivos.
“Without political protection and with Kirchnerism interested in focusing on him the failure that Cristina and her people also led, Fernández finds himself mired in two serious accusations: gender violence and corruption”
Fabiola Yáñez’s birthday party had already been an indelible stain, which Fernández first denied and then referred to her partner, and for which she ended up accepting a monetary penalty.
The intimate visits of friends and acquaintances of the President to Olivos during the months of restrictions imposed by himself were part of the set of unacceptable situations that in other countries caused the fall of governments, such as that of Boris Johnson, in Great Britain.
Without political protection and with Kirchnerism interested in focusing on him the failure that Cristina and her people also experienced, Fernández found himself sunk in another serious accusation before suffering the complaint from his wife.
As usual as an accusation of corruption against a former Kirchnerist president may be, the investigation into alleged bribes for the concentration of commissions on an insurance salesman, his friend Héctor Martínez Sosa, has, for Fernández, the harsh context of political and judicial helplessness. It will always be easier to investigate a leader who has fallen into disgrace, on whom his old companions are interested in placing all possible blame in order to free themselves of their own.
“The discourse, the measures and their consequent costs perpetrated by Kirchnerism on the gender gap, violence against women and its fatal consequence, femicides, have been completely ineffective”
Hypocrisy is not only Fernández’s. The women of Kirchnerism have now discovered the president’s aggressive side, from which they benefited from positions and funds for four years. A statement from La Cámpora went so far as to accuse him of mistreating Cristina; in reality what he did was disobey her.
The double standard is as obvious as it is crude. Faced with the advance of the accusation of sexual abuse to the doors of the actual prosecution of the mayor of La Matanza, Fernando Espinoza, Kirchnerism acts with visible solidarity. Governor Axel Kicillof ran to take a photo with him a day after the investigating judge María Fabiana Galletti indicted Espinoza. Fernández was declared an enemy; Espinoza has the protection that an ally demands in a key territory.
There is something even worse. The discourse, the measures and their consequent costs perpetrated by Kirchnerism on the gender gap, violence against women and its fatal consequence, femicides, have been completely ineffective. Fact, not story: in the last 10 years, the number of murders of women has remained stable and even increased last year, according to the official record of the Supreme Court of Justice.
Just as it had done with human rights policy, Kirchnerism turned the drama of gender inequality and violence against women into a weapon with which it sought to corner opponents, accusing them of being insensitive and sexist. Such cynicism provokes misleading reactions such as those that try to make people believe that nothing can or should be done to confront a serious and widespread problem.
Fernández’s well-earned misfortunes are the response to his dark time in power and his inability to build, from that privileged place, a shelter for the times of adversity. The situation of the former president also speaks to his successor, whose contemptuous ways of relating may be in the future excuses for revenge always included in the unavoidable descent to the plain where we mere mortals walk.
Sergio Suppo
