Tens of thousands of Argentines demonstrated on Friday in several cities in a country in shock to denounce the assassination attempt perpetrated Thursday evening against Vice-President Cristina Kirchner, which sparked a wave of international condemnation.
The day was declared a public holiday by President Alberto Fernandez, who described the attack on the former head of state (from 2007 to 2015) as “a fact of enormous gravity, the most serious to have occurred since our country regained democracy” in 1983. Shortly after 9 p.m. Thursday, according to multiple television footage, a man apparently acting alone pointed a handgun at Mr.me Kirchner, just yards from her, and appeared to pull the trigger without a shot going off, as she mingled with well-wishers outside her home in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires.
“Cristina is alive because for some reason that has not yet been technically confirmed, the weapon that contained five bullets did not fire, although it was triggered,” President Fernandez said in a statement. speech a few hours after the assassination attempt. The arrested man was identified as Fernando André Sabag Montiel, 35, of Brazilian nationality but of Argentine mother and Chilean father, according to police sources quoted by the official Telam news agency. Living in Argentina since 1993, he was arrested in March 2021 for carrying a knife. A man, “Mario”, presenting himself as his friend since adolescence, described him on the Telefe channel as a “mythomaniac”, a “marginal” lost since the death of his mother, and whose life “has often been influenced by alcohol. On his Instagram account, Fernando Sabag sports multiple changing looks and many tattoos, including a black sun, generally associated with Nazi groups. The assassination attempt was immediately condemned by all Latin American heads of state as well as by the Argentine opposition.
Pope Francis, former archbishop of Buenos Aires, sent a message of “solidarity” and “closeness at this delicate moment” on Friday, where he said he prayed that “social harmony and respect for democratic values always prevail”.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said he was “shocked” by the assassination attempt, which he “condemns”. The United States also “strongly condemned” the gesture, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeting that Washington stands “with the government and people of Argentina in rejecting violence and hatred. “.
In Buenos Aires, the Plaza de Mayo, opposite the Presidency, Argentina’s historic theater of joys and angers, was Black Friday packed with crowds, as were several avenues leading to it, in what was the largest gathering for many months in the capital, at the call of the ruling coalition, Frente de Todos (center left), and affiliated movements.
” ¡ Sí la tocan a Cristina, que quilombo sa va a armar! “(If they touch Cristina, what a mess is getting ready!), fetish song, resounded to the sound of bass drums and firecrackers in the rows, noisy and festive, supporters of Cristina Kirchner, 69, a key figure on the Argentinian left .
“I come above all to support democracy and Cristina, so that she knows that we are there. And to see if the Argentines wake up, realize that we cannot take this path,” Adriana Spina, a 61-year-old retiree, told AFP.
Verbal violence
Adored by part of the Peronist left, but a divisive personality hated by the opposition, Cristina Kirchner remains, seven years after her departure from the presidency, an influential figure, one year from a presidential election. She is currently on trial for fraud and corruption, a trial that is partly taking place virtually, which she does not attend. On August 22, the prosecution requested a 12-year prison sentence and life ineligibility against her in this trial, which concerns the awarding of public contracts in her stronghold of Santa Cruz (south), during her two presidential terms. .