A man crossed the circle of people surrounding the vice president and pulled the trigger but the gun, with five bullets, did not fire.
The tension escalates even more in Argentina. On this Thursday night, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was the subject of a attempted attack against him. A Brazilian citizen, nationalized Argentine, circumvented the circle of people who guarded and surrounded the vice president and arrived to point a gun at her head. The television showed a scene that does not recognize precedents in this country: the attacker tried to pull the trigger of the weapon but the shot did not come out. The noise was clearly heard on the recordings. “A man attempted against the life of the vice president and twice president. It is an extremely serious event, the most serious since we recovered democracy. Cristina remains alive because the weapon, which had five bullets, did not fire despite being triggered“, said President Alberto Fernández. Numerous people went to the vice president’s home, in the Recoleta neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires, shouting “if they touch” Cristina, “there will be quilombo (trouble)” .
“The episode moves the entire people. This attack deserves the most energetic repudiation of society. These events affect our democracy. We are obliged to recover our coexistence,” the president also said. “This is a fact of a extreme institutional and human gravity. The social peace has been disturbed. It is necessary to banish hatred from political and media discourses,” he added. Fernández decreed Friday a non-working day for society to take to the streets to express its rejection of violence. The president asked the judge in charge of the investigations that “preserves” the attacker’s life. Fernando Sabag Montiel, of Brazilian origin, has 35 years old, history of carrying weapons and episodes of violence. The first investigations seek to determine if he acted alone or was part of a network. His mobile phone has been confiscated.
Last March, the vice president was the target of another attack. Her office in the Senate was partially destroyed by stones thrown from outside. Fernández de Kirchner was not there but assured that “someone” had “planned” that action. At the same time, in several right-wing demonstrations, body bags with the names of government leaders, guillotines and simulations of execution by hanging were displayed.
regional impact
Several Latin American presidents and leaders condemned the act. The Chilean Gabriel Boric He repudiated “the assassination attempt” and called for resolving political problems through dialogue “and not with weapons” as happened in Argentina. “We condemn the cowardly assassination attempt against our sister @CFKArgentina. All our solidarity with the vice president. The Great Homeland is with you, sister,” said the former Bolivian president, Evo Morales. “We are relieved to know that Vice President Cristina Fernández is fine. The United States joins Argentina and all peaceful people in rejecting violence, extremism and hatred everywhere,” said the US ambassador in Buenos Aires. Aires, Marc R. Stanley.
For several days, Fernández de Kirchner’s house has been the scene of manifestations of his followers who repudiate the legal case for which they have asked for 12 years in prison and is considered by Kirchnerism an attempt at political proscription. The vice president has more than 500 complaints in court. The ruling party ensures that none of them is based on evidence. In this context, in which there are even demands for the death penalty against Fernández de Kirchner, this unusual episode has taken place.
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“It is an enormous degree of madness and I hate what they tried to do to the vice president,” said her son and national deputy, Máximo Kirchner. Different members of Peronism, in power, repeated similar ideas. The labor movement has called for mobilization and a cessation of activities this Friday. The General Confederation of Labor blamed what happened on “hate speech” from the right-wing opposition and certain media outlets.
The ex-president Mauricio Macri, a bitter rival of Fernández de Kirchner, called for “immediate and profound clarification by the courts.” About 50 senators from Peronism and the opposition agreed to give an institutional response to what happened. However, Patricia Bullrich, the leader of Macri’s party who expresses the hardest positions of the right, criticized Fernández: “he is playing with fire: instead of seriously investigating a serious incident, he accuses the opposition and the press, and decrees a holiday to mobilize militants. Turn an individual act of violence into a political move. Lamentable”.