Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva visited Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at her apartment on Thursday in Buenos Aires, where the Argentine ex-president is under house arrest, wishing her “the strength to continue fighting.”
President Lula arrived at Fernández de Kirchner’s home in the Constitución neighbourhood of the capital to the cheers of around 100 supporters of the veteran Peronist leader.
He emerged almost an hour later, but did not speak to the small crowd gathered outside.
Also in attendance were Unión por la Patria (UxP) national deputy Eduardo Valdés and Nobel Peace Prize laureate and human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
Fernández de Kirchner, the dominant Peronist leader of the last two decades, was convicted of “fraudulent administration” while president between 2007 and 2015.
The current national chair of the Partido Justicialista (PJ), she is the main opposition leader and a fierce critic of President Javier Milei’s government.
The 72-year-old began serving a six-year sentence last month after losing a final appeal to the Supreme Court and has also been barred for life from holding public office.
Lula found his leftist ally “in good health, strong and determined to fight,” he said in a message on social media platform X.
“With Cristina, I have a friendship going back many years, far beyond any institutional relationship. The affection and love of friends, political allies and shared ideals of social justice and the fight against inequality,” he highlighted.
“In addition to expressing my solidarity with her for everything she has been through, I wished her all the strength she needed to continue fighting, with the same determination that has characterised her career,” he wrote.
Fernández de Kirchner hailed the visit as “much more than a personal gesture: it was a political act of solidarity,” in her own message on X.
She drew a parallel between her fate and that of Lula’s, describing how he also was imprisoned – in his case, for bribe-taking and money-laundering, convictions that were later quashed – before being voted back into office.
“They tried to silence him,” she wrote, but “he returned” thanks to the “votes of the Brazilian people.”
Fernández de Kirchner petitioned the courts for permission to host Lula. Granted house arrest, she is not allowed to leave her apartment at San José 1111 and must wear an electronic ankle monitor.
Federal Judge Jorge Gorini approved the request Tuesday, though he emphasised that the ex-president must comply strictly with conduct regulations imposed by the court, including “not disturbing the peace of the [local] neighbourhood and/or alter the peaceful coexistence of its inhabitants.”
Fernández de Kirchner is still waiting for clarity as to whether she can have unlimited visitors, as her lawyers have requested.
The meeting took centre stage on Thursday, overshadowing the biannual summit of the Mercosur regional bloc, made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. Bolivia is in the process of joining.
Lula was one of several high-profile guests hosted by Milei, who has made no secret of his disdain of the Brazilian leftist, previously branding him a “Communist” and “corrupt.”
The two did not partake in a bilateral meeting on Thursday.
Lula took over the rotating pro-tempore presidency of the bloc from Milei at the end of the summit.
‘Authoritarian drift'
In a post on social media issued after the meeting with Lula, Fernández de Kirchner alleged that the Milei administration is overseeing an “authoritarian drift” and reeated her claim that she is a victim of “lawfare.”
“Today we welcomed comrade Lula to my home, where I am under house arrest by decision of a Judiciary that long ago stopped pretending to be impartial and has become a political party in service of economic power,” she wrote.
She went on to say that “the eyes of the world” are watching as Argentina “experiences a true authoritarian drift” at the hands of Milei’s government, which the ex-president alleged amounts to “low-intensity state terrorism.”
“We fought too hard to build Argentine democracy to now allow it to be dismantled step by step. And yet, that same democracy is today being hollowed out from within by a government that calls itself ‘libertarian’, but which only grants freedom to the richest,” she stressed.
She concluded by stating that “they are turning the country into a continental experiment”, drawing a comparison with what Chile experienced under former dictator Augusto Pinochet, when the country became a laboratory for the economic policies of the so-called “Chicago Boys.”
– TIMES/NA/AFP
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