Fate has been unkind to Alberto Fernández. It could not have been otherwise. The man was doomed from the moment he accepted that Faustian bargain with Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in which – in exchange for a stint in the presidency and the chance to hobnob with other “world leaders” that came with it – he gave her what presumably were his convictions and with them his self-respect. This will have hurt enough to make him lash out at anyone he thought inferior and, by doing so, tell himself he was not a harmless weakling who let himself be bullied by a bossy woman but was, in his own household at least, a strong man whose orders had to be obeyed to the letter.
Perhaps it was this that made him into the nasty piece of work who, according to much of the local commentariat, enjoyed beating up his live-in girlfriend and helped his cronies in the insurance business to get their hands on large amounts of taxpayers’ money while boasting that he was as clean as they come. The consensus is that he was not merely a rotten president but a thoroughly despicable human being.
This raises some awkward questions. Why did Cristina – who had known Alberto for decades and was surely acquainted with his shortcomings – decide to gift him the country’s top job? And after he got sworn in, did she and other leading politicians, plus the dozens of individuals who surrounded him while he was in office, think that his personal behaviour – which cannot have been a secret to insiders – was a private matter that they could overlook? And what does all this tell us about the country’s political establishment? Was Alberto an exceptionally bad character or was he just a typical member of what Javier Milei calls “the caste” who felt he was entitled to make up his own rules?
There can be little doubt that Cristina, who is a notoriously self-centred lady, chose Alberto because she assumed she had his measure and wanted to get her own back on him for criticising her with picturesque virulence when she ruled the country. For her, turning him into a dependent puppet must have been most gratifying. She must also have sensed that urging the electorate to vote for a man who, after spending years attacking her and boasting about his own adherence to lofty principles, had let himself be bought, would be more than enough to convince her fellow politicians that she still retained a great deal of power and that it would be risky to defy her.
Another benefit for Cristina was that, while she could take credit for anything good that came from the government Alberto nominally headed, she could blame him for whatever went wrong. Until the economy started crumbling, the scheme she had dreamt up worked fairly well. Everybody knew who really had the whip hand. However, when opposition mounted she contrived to dissociate herself from the government she had formed by making out that Alberto had betrayed her trust in him.
Is violence against women commonplace among male politicians in this part of the world? If the recent cases against Alberto, La Matanza Mayor Fernando Espinoza and Tucumán Province’s former governor José Alperovich are anything to go by, some, perhaps many, have long taken it for granted that they could get away with aggressively demanding sexual favours from vulnerable females. This is not surprising. By their nature, professional politicians throughout the world tend to be narcissists who are determined to show they are stronger than their rivals and, if so inclined, take great pride in their amatory conquests. Some may cling to old-fashioned notions of chivalry, but they are exceptions. Most see themselves as pillars of the patriarchy to whom the rise of militant feminism is something that should not be taken seriously.
Much is being made of the contrast between Alberto the fiery orator who posed as a fearless defender of the “me-too” movement and Alberto the macho male who, behind closed doors, allegedly not only treated Fabiola Yáñez like dirt but was also foolish enough to record on his smartphones his flirtations with other women. By now, any moderately well-informed person must be aware that leaving abundant evidence of one’s misdeeds in smartphones or out there in cyberspace is, shall we say, rather unwise; both here and abroad, many prominent people have run into trouble as a result. However, it would appear that Alberto treasured so much his moments of intimacy with females he found desirable that it never occurred to him that he was busily constructing a trap into which, sooner or later, he was almost certain to fall.
Before his personal behaviour came under intense public scrutiny, Alberto was regarded as a clever but on the whole fairly ordinary man who, thanks entirely to a woman who evidently despised him, had risen above his station. He may have been a reasonably efficient Cabinet minister, but he was not presidential material. Though much the same can be said about others who have managed to win high office without possessing the necessary talents, Alberto has always been hampered by his lack of charisma. While men like Carlos Menem – who had no qualms when it came to booting his wife out of the presidential residence when he grew tired of her nagging and went on to marry a former Miss Universe – and Juan Domingo Perón – who liked surrounding himself with adolescents – would have found it easy enough to make light of charges like the ones being levelled by Fabiola and persuade the public that their victims deserved what happened to them, Alberto’s efforts to defend himself have had no positive effect.
Is this because the world Menem and Perón lived in, in which the rules of sexual conduct were very different from those that prevail today, belongs to ancient history? Up to a point: back then many people did seem to think that it was normal for upstanding males to treat women harshly and expect them to take it for evidence of true love and respond by begging humbly for forgiveness for whatever they had done to offend their master. Rumour has it that in some quarters this is still the case. Be that as it may, for now at any rate even a modicum of chivalry, such as opening doors for women and standing up so they can take a seat in a train or bus, can anger feminists, while macho thuggishness is disapproved of by just about everybody.
Unless this changes very soon, Alberto Fernández – even if he is spared a jail sentence – will probably be shunned by his fellow politicians for the rest of his days.
Comments