Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Photo: Victoria Egurza.
By Alejandra García – Sep 20, 2022
Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, jsut a few days after surviving death by sheer good luck, is fighting with all her strength against a fictitious corruption case conceived and constructed by the right wing of her country. Hatred, political persecution and injustice took her to court this week, where she has been victorious so far.
On Monday, September 19, Fernández’s lawyers started the presentation of their defense arguments in the “Roads Case” (Causa Vialidad), where they highlighted the absence of evidence against the former president and currently the most popular politician in the country.
According to the newspaper Página 12, Carlos Alberto Beraldi and Ariel Llernovoy, representatives of the Argentine Senate, began their presentations on Monday at 8:00 a.m. local time, and the procedure continued on Tuesday.
“I’ve said this before. They aren’t coming for me only. They’re coming for all of you, for the salaries, for workers’ rights, for retirees—that’s what they’re after,” Cristina Fernández said in an address to her supporters last month.
On Friday, September 23, the vice-president pleaded in person during the third hearing. She presented as her own counsel and defended herself.
She is trying to respond to the 12-year prison sentence requested by Attorney Diego Luciani, who is accusing her of being the head of an illicit association that defrauded the Argentine State of millions of dollars.
On August 22, Luciani requested a 12-year prison sentence, as well as her disqualification from holding public office for the rest of her life for alleged irregularities in the awarding of public works contracts in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, where she and her late husband, former President Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), began their political careers.
Fernández denounced the lack of evidence and the violations committed in the process, for which she requested to extend her statement, a petition that was rejected by the Court. After this decision, Fernandez chose to present her arguments in a live broadcast from her office in the Senate.
“Our justice system allows a few to violate all the rules. Nothing that the prosecutors said was proven. They were not accusations; it was a script and a pretty bad one,” she said during that broadcast.
Last week, the former president described the process against her as “another example of political persecution” and recalled that, in 2015, a court in Santa Cruz had dismissed the same case for the non-existence of evidence for corruption or any other crime.
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She also revealed the links between judges, prosecutors, business owners, officials, and former neo-liberal President Mauricio Macri (2015-2019).
This lawfare trial started based on a lie, using as an excuse the fierce political and media campaign unleashed by the right wing, which claimed without evidence that during her presidential terms works were not carried out but money was awarded for them. Newspapers such as Clarín and La Nación published articles about alleged overpricing and numbers that nobody knows where they came from. It is all part of a great fiction.
“Nothing of what they said was proven. Moreover, it was verified that everything was exactly the other way round and we could see it from the testimonies of over 100 witnesses summoned by the Public Prosecutor’s Office,” Cristina Fernández asserted.
A big part of this charade reveals the fear and trepidation the right wing has for Cristina as the October 2023 presidential election looms in the background. The right wing neoliberals and the IMF are hoping this bogus charge will stick and get her out of the way because they know that if an election were to happen now Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would win in a landslide against anyone.
