The scene is revealing. It happened on Thursday of last week, at Casa Rosada. Pilar Ramírez, the new coordinator of the La Libertad Avanza campaign, headed a meeting with collaborators that support her in that task that her boss, Karina Milei. Recall that Ramírez was raised in that position so that Eduardo “Lule” Menem, splashed by the coimas scandal, could leave the scene. But who went to see the participants of that mythy when it ended? Yes, to Menem, the true electoral strategist of space. It is that, although they have run it, although today they hide it inside a closet, “Lule” is sister Karina and will never resign.
What there is is a staging to show that he is no longer in command, a media attempt that seeks to install that Coimagate had consequences and there were fuses. What there is, in short, is the staging of a punishment that did not happen. Because Menem, nicknamed “the most crowded” by his many internal rivals in the government, not only was he not thrown, but continues to handle everything. Karina holds it, even against her brother’s opinion.
Like any cosmetic operation, Menem’s running scene shows the spinning. Because while the government installs that version among the journalists who take the note, Pilar Ramírez itself despairs, in private, by that double command that leaves exposed how far the Karinism is immolated to protect the official who in the audios of Diego Spagnuolo appears mentioned as who raised the 3 percent coimas for the Secretary General. In Creole: a “valijero”. And how is it done to let go of someone who knows so much and who did that job on top because another person was entrusted? How to punish who “steals for the crown,” as it was said in the 90s? In that logic of the omertá you can find the reasons why Menem is untouchable.
His cousin, Martín Menem, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, is also a central protagonist in the plot of the coimas. His figure is cut behind the Argentine Swiss drugstore that channeled the alleged bribes that the companies in the sector should pay that wanted to keep their contracts with the State. According to this labor division scheme, as well as “Lule” was the one who would have collected, Martín officiated as a link. And there is one more protagonist: who presented the Menem and the Kvalivker, the owners of the Argentine Swiss, is none other than Mauricio Macri.
The question, then, is that Coimagate is far from resolving and that, in the meantime, “Lule” is still there. No matter how much they hide it.
