This morning, the official Twitter account of the United States Embassy in Argentina sparked a stir on the website with a tweet reading “Perdió Cristina.” The tweet was soon deleted, and the Embassy claimed that they did not authorise the post.
Users related the tweet to Sunday's elections that used the electronic voting system in Neuquén province, in which Governor Omar Gutiérrez secured re-election with nearly 40 percent of the provincial vote. Gutiérrez represents the Neuquén Popular Movement, the traditional party of power in Neuquén.
The incumbent beat the Citizens Unity-Neuquén Front runner-up Ramón Rioseco by a wide margin of 26.6 percent. The Citizens Unity-Neuquén Front, which responds nationally to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, cited voters from voting stations across the province who had experienced alleged irregularities.
An official statement on the Embassy’s website, referencing the controversy, later said that: “Anyone who follows the Embassy on social networks, which are used exclusively to celebrate the long and solid friendship between the United States and Argentina, would have immediately recognized the fake message due to a breach in security measures on our social network accounts.”
When contacted by Perfíl, the Embassy responded that “it was not us.” While the organisation says it does “not yet know how it happened,” they are “investigating” who may be behind the tweet.
A frenzy of Twitter users reacted to Embassy’s account drama. One user asked: "Are you going to publicly apologise to Cristina Kirchner? Because Macri is really the one that lost.”
Others were amused by the incident. One user tweeted: "That's it, they made my day, now we have the Ks talking about conspiracies for 10 more years."
Former Kirchnerite health minister Daniel Gollan called out what he saw as “interference” in the Sunday elections on his Twitter account.
He commented on the US Embassy’s tweets, saying "Another tweet was published that says [the US Embassy] cannot explain how it could have happened. The same Embassy would not want to respond to the Argentine justice if [Marcelo] D'Alessio were an agent of that country.”
-TIMES/Perfíl
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