The assassination attempt on Cristina Kirchner became a turning point for the Argentine politics. How will the ruling party and the opposition navigate such a traumatic and almost unprecedented episode in Argentine history?
In the first hours that followed the event, there were some movements that for the last years of national politics were unthinkable. On the one hand there was an alignment without nuances on the part of Peronism, which at other times always lets its insiders show. In this case, there are no grays. Until Juan Graboiswho just left the Frente de Todos, tweeted in favor of Cristina: “God protected her. The police don’t. Now it’s our turn to take care of her.”
On the other side of the crack, the former president Mauricio Macri, the historical alter ego of CFKalso sent a message of solidarity: “My absolute rejection of the attack suffered by Cristina Kirchner which fortunately has had no consequences for the vice president. This very serious fact requires an immediate and profound clarification by the Justice and the security forces.
But the prevailing political climate in Argentina, of confrontation and constant electoral calculation, also crept in in the first hours, in which from the Government they only expected solidarity and reflection in the face of the attempted assassination of a political leader such as Cristina Kirchner. Patricia Bullrich, for example, he came out to criticize the President Albert Fernandez and said the attack had been “an individual act”, dismissing the idea of a plot.
“It can be a turning point for the better or for the worse. So that it is not for the worse, the fundamental thing is that the investigation determines with certainty everything that happened, because, unfortunately, mistrust prevails. Beyond the convictions and a certain politically correct speech, it is essential that this does not generate doubts, ”says the political consultant Serge Berenzstein, and adds: “How can it become a positive turning point? If there is greatness, generosity and sense of opportunity of the political elite. They are not attributes that predominate. The speech of Alberto Fernandez It was a lost opportunity, far from putting himself in the place of a statesman and summoning the political leadership and forcing them to put themselves in an institutional place and move away from disputes, the only thing he did was deepen them.”
President Fernández used the national network for the first time to announce a national holiday and accuse the opposition of instigating this situation: “Democratic coexistence has been broken by the hate speech that has spread from different political, judicial and media spaces of Argentine society. Faced with this accusation, the toughest wing of Together for Change reacted immediately, with Bullrich at the helm.
Miguel Ángel Pichetto, former head of the Kirchner party in the Senate and today an opponent of CFK, first sent a message of solidarity and then, after Alberto Fernández’s speech, affirmed: “The President does not understand anything. The opposition repudiated the fact and expressed solidarity with the vice president. The President, for his part, blames the opposition, the Justice and the media. He then he decrees a national holiday. So that? All pathetic.”
The climate of tension does not cease and, after the traumatic episode, the political dynamic took over the situation again, perhaps with the novelty and the expectation of achieving a larger mobilization than those that were happening up to now, instead of crying out the moods. The call for Friday the 2nd to march to Plaza de Mayo shows that irresponsibility. Winning the street again after the scare of the failed attack is the way that Peronism has to show its absolute subordination to the boss at this time. If the Prosecutor Vialidad’s case Luciani had already put them in a column, now the cohesion is even greater. And the test balloon of the CFK 2023 candidacy gains strength.
Máximo Kirchner had given an interview in the morning of the same Thursday of the attack, in which he had mentioned the possibility of an unfortunate episode. “They are seeing who kills the first Peronist,” he had stated in relation to the confrontations between militants and the police. Reality took a turn in another direction. An infiltrator among supporters of Cristina Kirchner triggered a few centimeters from his head.
For the custody of CFK, this episode is also a turning point, because the personality of the vice president forced her custodians to give in to the risky movements of greeting the militants closely. That flexibility left Cristina exposed to any attack. She will also have to recalculate the way she moves and relates to the militancy.
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