After the attempted assassination of Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, President Alberto Fernández decreed a national holiday this Friday so that “in peace and harmony, the Argentine people can express themselves in defense of life, democracy and in solidarity with our vice president.” “A man attempted once morest the life of the current vice president of the Nation and twice constitutional president. This fact is extremely serious, it is the most serious that has happened since we have recovered our democracy,” he said in a video recorded in the Quinta de Olivos, which was broadcast minutes before midnight on the national network.
The President, before recording the message, spoke by phone with the Vice President to show solidarity. The repudiation of what happened was transversal to the entire political arc and the union centrals are evaluating carrying out a national strike that will be confirmed this morning. At 8:30 there will also be a cabinet meeting at Casa Rosada. The Saturday act of the Buenos Aires PJ, which was going to take place in the town of Merlo and in which the vice president was going to speak, was suspended.
How the national chain was conceived
Officials closest to the President were deeply shocked when they learned of the attack on CFK. Some of them were even having dinner together and when the video arrived they mightn’t stop watching it. They repeated it over and over on their cell phones. A few minutes later, before 10 at night, they received the message that the President would speak on national television and they urgently went to the Quinta de Olivos.
The Legal and Technical Secretary, Vilma Ibarra, and the Deputy Chief of Staff, Juan Manuel Olmos, went together by car and there they met Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero; the presidential spokeswoman, Gabriela Cerruti, and the secretary of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello. They all locked themselves in a room from which the President left to be able to speak with CFK and give him his support before eleven o’clock at night.
In another adjoining room, the advisers were waiting for the news and putting everything together to record the President’s message, which was finally broadcast on the national network before midnight on Thursday.
The ministers’ chat, meanwhile, was bursting with messages. Most of them had been just a few hours earlier at the government event at the CCK and were very excited regarding the energy-related announcements, which they described as “historic.” The weather turned 180 degrees with the videos and screenshots perfectly illustrating CFK’s assassination attempt.
From the WhatsApp group, the ministers coordinated to write a statement that came out before the President’s chain begins. There they stressed that “what happened tonight is extremely serious and threatens democracy, institutions and the rule of law. The rejection must be total and absolute by all political forces.” In addition, they added that “it is urgent that the Justice clarify the facts and that the whole of society, especially the opposition and the media, reflect on the disastrous consequences of the spread of hate speech and immediately cease the production and reproduction of those messages once morest the vice president”.
Alberto Fernandez’s speech
“As part of a massive presence of people in front of the vice president’s home, a man pointed a firearm at her head and fired. Cristina remains alive because, for a reason not yet technically confirmed, the weapon she had five bullets were not fired despite having been triggered,” detailed Alberto Fernández on the national network. “This attack -he added- deserves the most energetic repudiation of the entire Argentine society, of all political sectors and all the men and women of the republic, because these events affect our democracy. We are obliged to recover the democratic coexistence that has been broken by the hate speech that has spread from different political, judicial and media spaces of Argentine society.”
Then, he said that “we are facing an event that has extreme institutional and human gravity. Our vice president has been attacked and social peace has been altered. Argentina cannot lose another minute. There is no time. It is necessary to banish the violence and hatred of political and media discourse and of our life in society”. Along these lines, he also reported that he contacted the judge who is investigating what happened and asked her “to quickly clarify the responsibilities and the facts.” “I have also asked you to ensure the life of the direct defendant who is in custody,” she said.
At the end of his speech, the President summoned “each and every one of the Argentine men and women, the entire political and social leadership, the media and society in general, to reject any form of violence.” “We need to isolate, not validate and repudiate the disqualifying, stigmatizing and offensive words that only divide and confront us. May the shock, horror and repudiation that this fact generates in us become a permanent commitment to eradicate hatred and violence from life in a democracy,” Fernandez stressed in a message that was read and lasted just over three minutes.
