Stupefied, society is witnessing the public airing of scandals involving former president Alberto Fernández during the period of his deficient administration. In addition to an investigation into multi-million-dollar insurance deals, there is now the complaint from the then-first lady, Fabiola Yañez, for gender violence.
Social astonishment – fuelled by the morbid dissemination of chat messages, photos and videos that are not necessarily related to the crimes being investigated – is multiplying in the face of the brazen hand-washing of leaders and ex-officials of the former Frente de Todos administration.
There are those who will have to give political explanations. And there are those who will have to answer to the justice system about cover-ups.
Let us review some of them, a necessary step to understand the context and the cover-up of how Alberto Fernández reached the Presidency and how he exercised it, after more than three decades of a career marked by betrayals, lies, double standards and careful carelessness.
At this level of analysis it should be made explicit, just in case, that the main individual responsible for all these events is Alberto Fernández himself. From any point of view, including the criminal one, if the justice system corroborates the very serious allegations of which he has been accused.
For political and electoral reasons, in order to defeat Mauricio Macri, a large part of Peronism unified and tried to disguise Fernández in a garb that fitted him badly, helped by some sectors of the media that preferred to forget his background for many reasons.
Central to this was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who catapulted him into prime position for the presidency as her chosen candidate. As president, she criticised him in public and distanced herself from his administration, as if she had had nothing to do with it. With the same logic, he slammed him last Friday, claiming in a lengthy post that the leaked chats showing violence against Yañez and the photos of the beatings "reveal the most sordid and darkest aspects of the human condition."
What about political self-criticism and a review of decision-making in Peronism?
As Juan Grabois pointed out in another post, in a strong call for the Peronist leadership to avoid looking the other way and force itself to review its functioning, CFK chose the movement's last three presidential candidates almost by hand: Daniel Scioli, Fernández and Sergio Massa. Will she also choose the fourth, as La Cámpora intends? There is total denial.
Speaking of deniers, it will be interesting to find out what members of the previous government, especially those with regular access to the president's private life, have to say about the reported beatings of the first lady. Would they be accessories to the crime? Would they have failed in their duties as public officials by not denouncing a crime such as gender violence?
Some of them are so close to Alberto Fernández that they went to visit him these days to the coquettish flat that his friend Enrique ‘Pepe’ Albistur still lends him in Puerto Madero. This is the case of Julio Vitobello, Fernández’s presidential chief-of-staff during his entire term in office. In addition to providing support for his friend, because it is said that he is depressed by the scandal, doesn't Vitobello have anything else to contribute to the case?
More names that could shed light, if they wanted to, on this lurid issue. Juan Manuel Olmos, Fernández's historic all-rounder, first chief of presidential advisors and then deputy chief-of-staff. Santiago Cafiero, former Cabinet chief and foreign minister. Daniel Rodríguez, who has been with Alberto for two decades and was the ‘mayor’ of the Quinta de Olivos presidential residence, where several of the incidents raised by Yañez took place. Alejandro Daniel Guglielmi, the head of the Casa Militar (in charge of presidential security), perhaps.
Federico Saavedra, then in charge of the Presidential Medical Unit – could he corroborate the healing of the wounds inflicted on the first lady by Fernández? According to sources close to Yañez, some of the mistreatment she received forced her to hide out for several days at Olivos. In fact, nobody in the residence was surprised that last year she decided to move with the couple's young son to a secondary villa at the site, far from the main one occupied by the head of state.
The two former Women, Gender & Diversity ministers appointed by Alberto Fernández during his administration, Elizabeth Gómez Alcorta and Ayelén Mazzina, said they knew nothing about the alleged violence. Will they tell the truth? Perhaps their reactions have been influenced by the fact that the leak of the scandal came from an expert analysis of the mobile phone of María Cantero, Alberto Fernández's historic private secretary, who was involved in the insurance case. Yañez is said to have shared the chats and photos with her not out of friendship, but because she had already turned to other sources for help in vain.
Almost none of Alberto's friends in politics have opened their mouths. Not even, or above all, Vilma Ibarra, his faithful secretary of Legal & Technical Affairs, who years earlier had been his partner.
"What do you want me to say? He was a womaniser, we all knew that. And that he got on badly with Fabiola, too. I didn't know that, I swear," one of the regular visitors to Olivos commented off-the-record.
At the time of going to press, the one who did speak was Eduardo Valdés, a member of the lower house Chamber of Deputies and an old friend of the ex-president. "It's a difficult, complex situation. It is surprising. I never imagined it. I have shared moments with the couple and I have never witnessed this kind of thing. Fabiola never said anything to us. I didn't even know they were separated in Spain. We all found out about this now, both me and other friends. It wasn't Alberto's way, of telling about these things," the lawmaker said in a radio interview.
Valdés and Leandro Santoro (another leader who was once a friend of Fernández's and later distanced himself) were two of the Frente de Todos former deputies who signed a draft resolution in the Chamber of Deputies to repudiate the gender violence reported by Yañez and to demand prompt clarification of the incident.
According to Alberto Fernández's entourage, these two signatures irritated him in particular. And it gave him some satisfaction that other lawmakers, such as Cafiero and Victoria Tolosa Paz, and his detractor Máximo Kirchner, did not sign it.
He is content with little. As always.
Comments