It is not an easy start to the year for the PRO. Added to the internal of Together for Change, a video appeared that hit the Achilles’ heel of macrismo: the alleged assembly of corruption cases against a trade unionist and illegal espionage. But it is not the greatest danger, because after the initial explosion, there is an underlying fear that more footage will appear. Nobody knows what the IPA may have recorded during management.
“We are so innocent that we made the Medina Paw like a hero”, says, between ironic and angry, a source of the PRO. It is the message that went from cell phone to cell phone among the leaders of the yellow party when they tried to control damage. An absolutely unfortunate phrase of Marcelo Villegas, Whoever it was Labor Minister of María Eugenia Vidal, about how he would have liked to have “a Gestapo to put an end to the guilds” and a comment about how they could have the Uocra leader arrested, cornered them.
“At this point, it is annoying that they have held that meeting, because they end up turning the story upside down,” he said. Patricia Bullrich about the images that transcended. However, he retorted: “But Pata Medina is a jet and he is a thief who has spent his life extorting money from construction businessmen in La Plata.”
From the other political side, they do not let the issue lose importance. Both Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Kirchner They spoke out about it and the leaders of the Front for All do not stop making comments. Even Medina, prosecuted for illicit association, was encouraged: “Vidal sought to end the Argentine labor movement,” he said in radio statements. Then he went for more and said that Macri “was not only because of the union leaders, I think he hated the workers, he hated the black heads.”
PLANNING. In the middle of the fire, the PRO tries to stop the fire from spreading. For that, Vidal’s environment managed its own strategy. The first step was for Villegas to ask for forgiveness, in a concise way: “That word is far from my way of feeling and thinking,” he said about the Gestapo. The second step was for them to appear in court, to show good will. Then, they put a cloak of suspicion on who would have filmed that meeting in which there were Vidal’s ministers; the mayor of La Plata, Julio Garro; five construction entrepreneurs and three officials from the Federal Intelligence Agency.
“Self-employed people filmed it” they maintain in the PRO. It is the way to untie any political leader who could have requested that recording, made on June 15, 2017. But what is more difficult to explain is what the three AFI officials, very close to the Macrista government, were doing there: Sebastián De Stefano, legal director of the agency; Diego Dalmau Pereyra, director of Counterintelligence and Darío Biorci, brother-in-law and chief of staff of Silvia Majdalani, deputy director of that institution.
In Vidal’s environment they assure that the images surprised her. That the former governor of Buenos Aires was aware of that meeting, but that she understood that it had been requested by the businessmen of La Plata who were seeking political support to denounce the construction unionist. “I never imagined that it would be in these tight terms. A disaster with Marcelo”, said the deputy to a leader with whom she came across during her vacations in Pinamar (see note page 28).
But the most important point of the strategy is to ensure that the case escapes from the hands of the federal judge of La Plata, Ernesto Kreplak, and falls on Commodore Py. The Vidalistas wield the principle of territoriality: the meeting was held on the seventh floor of Banco Provincia, in downtown Buenos Aires. That argument, added to the fact that the Retirement courts were investigating a case for the same events initiated by Pata Medina in 2019, could move the file to a more comfortable enclave for the PRO.
COUNTEROFFENSIVE. In the Front of All they will try to prevent the plan of Vidalism from being executed successfully. And in trade unionism, they closed ranks in the same direction: not only did Medina appear as a plaintiff in the case, he also did Roberto Baradel, from Suteba.
By February, when the judicial fair ends, the fight over the competence of the judges is going to be fierce. But to ensure that he does not stop his march, Judge Kreplak enabled the possibility of continuing to investigate during January and has already requested that the first test measures be carried out: he ordered raids and ordered the seizure of cell phones and computers of the officials who participated in the meeting. .
Mindful that the case can move to Comodoro Py, Medina’s lawyer asked Judge Kreplak to request a copy of the file that was being processed in the capital courts. If the magistrate accepts it, they could lead Vidalism.
The other issue on which Kirchnerism wants progress is in the relationship between Garro and the businessmen present at the meeting. According to his suspicions, shortly after the meeting they would have made the urban planning code more flexible to give him the possibility of building taller buildings, therefore, making a better deal. They suspect that this could have been the bargaining chip for helping Vidalism put Medina in jail.
Since the departure of the macrismo from power, the procedural situation of Pata Medina has improved drastically. After spending three years in prison, he was placed under house arrest in 2020. A year later he was released, but in August 2021 he returned to house arrest after violating the ban on union activities, when he tried to regain control of the union. Now, the images that transcended could be his coup de grâce. But he is no longer satisfied with his freedom: he believes that it is time to fight back.
