Argentine president lashes out at opposition that wants to impeach him and warns he won’t back down

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leaking of photos last week of the birthday celebration of First Lady Fabiola Yáñez during the height of last year’s health restrictions has sparked a scandal in the middle of the election campaign and the reaction of the opposition, which intends to impeach Fernández.

The president lashed out Monday against the opposition, pointing out that “they will never” hear him apologize for various policies and actions as those carried out by the previous government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), who belongs to the main opposition force.

“They will never have to make me apologize because I knelt in front of the International Monetary Fund and indebted Argentina and generations of Argentines”, nor for meeting in the presidential residence with businessmen to give them “advantages and business” with the State, among other issues.

JUSTICE INVESTIGATES

This is the second pronouncement of the President after images were published last Friday on the front pages of the main newspapers in Argentina, showing a dozen people, among them Fernández, celebrating Yáñez’s birthday at the presidential residence of Olivos, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

That meeting took place on July 14, 2020, as admitted by Fernãndez, when a presidential decree was in force in Argentina with hard sanitary restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, among them, the prohibition to hold social gatherings, under threat of being sanctioned.

The President is also facing a complaint about the violation of measures to prevent an epidemic, abuse of authority, and violation of the duties of a public official, which was filed in Federal Criminal and Correctional Court 7.

The complaint was filed last July 28 by two opposition activists when the record of visits to the presidential residence during the strict quarantine in force in 2020 was published, and the prosecutor Ramiro Gonzalez decided to proceed with the investigation, which was later expanded when the photo of the First Lady’s birthday was published.

FIRST LADY’S GUILT

Fernández had told last Friday that Yáñez had called for “a toast” to her friends on her birthday, regretted “that it had happened,” and acknowledged that the social gathering “should not have taken place.”

But Fernández’s words were taken by members of the opposition and some political analysts not as an apology but as a way of holding Yáñez responsible.

Fernandez echoed the criticism by stating that some “were so miserable” that they read her “sincere, honest and repentant words”; otherwise, that she was “blaming” her partner.

“I should have apologized for a dinner that should not have been made. I am the only one responsible,” said Fernández energetically, after qualifying the meal in Olivos as “a slip” and “an oversight” and expressing: “I am very sorry for what happened”.

Meanwhile, he acknowledged that he moves “as a common man”, who “sometimes” does not consider that he is the president and must set an example.