MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine “militant” journalist apologizes to Malvinas war rank and file veterans

Gustavo Sylvestre, once a Clarin media group commentator, has become a stalwart stooge of the Kirchner administrations

A well-known face in Buenos Aires television, and member of the so-called new school of “militant” journalism, very close to the Kirchner governments, had to backtrack and publicly apologize to the combatants who fought in the South Atlantic conflict after calling them a bunch of cowards, who did not defend the motherland and ignominiously surrendered to the British.

Gustavo Sylvestre in his program +NeverAgainIsNeverAgain+, and in reply to comments from former Argentine president Eduardo Duhalde who warned that if things in the country don't change midterm elections next year would not take place and a military coup could not be discarded.

As can be imagined the militant journalist started by blasting Duhalde (whose relations with the Kirchners are not good) for all his “forecast nonsense”, and then went on to attack the military. “A coup?, they even lost a war cowardly...When they had to go and defend the motherland, which was their task, they lost the war cowardly. Why? because they were involved in assaulting the institutions of the republic, and when in the field they had to show what they had been trained for, they didn't know what to do”, underlined a cheeky Sylvester.

His comments were immediately rejected and repudiated from all sectors of the military, who strongly defended the actions of the rank and file combatants in 1982 against the UK Task Force. “Given the aggravating expressions against our Malvinas War Veterans, said at a social media, the Argentine Navy renews its memory commitment to all those who lie in the sea, in the islands, those who returned and to their families”, said a twitter from the navy hashtag LaArmadaDeLosArgentinos.

Likewise the head of the Argentina Army, General Agustín Cejas in a similar vein said, “It was a war. And nobody but the soldiers with the rifles in their hands confronting the enemy, can interpret and value the conduct, fears and heroisms. We honor our fallen heroes and those who came back, and all war veterans” hashtag +SomosElEjercito+.

Sylvester pointed that his message was misinterpreted and not directed to the soldiers but to the “generals coup plotters” and underlined, ”my apologies if I offended you, but I was referring to the generals not drunk of power but of whisky, who commanded that war. And the generals who surrendered cowardly. I was not referring to the heroic soldiers that remained in Malvinas and who, like Martin Balza (a war veteran and ex head of the Army) fought heroically. It is clear I was not referring to them, besides everybody knows of my respect and friendship with Martin Balza“.

The militant journalist also appealed to the social webs to make his case clearer, ”I belong to the 1962 Class. I was reincorporated for the Malvinas conflict. For those who make up stories in the net works and attempt to undermine the honorability of people. And I defend the Malvinas cause, and have followed it always. And will continue to accompany (veterans and families)”.

However it must be said that Mr. Sylvester not so many years ago worked for the Clarin media group, including its television channels, (the hegemonic media which Cristina Kirchner so much loathes and has tried to dismember). But despite his job supposedly as an independent reporter or commentator, sometime in 2012, it emerged that his wife, Marcela Beatriz Adaime had two jobs with the Argentine government, one as a close staffer of then president Cristina Fernandez in the Executive, and a second in Congress, more precisely in the Senate in a Commission under control of the “K”s.

This forced Mr. Sylvester to step down from his independent role, but not for long since he was contracted by another television station, one of several media purchased by Kirchner business cronies, to counter the influence of Clarin. Since then, and only with his antivirus face mask, Sylvester has become an unabashed militant of the Lady and Kirchners, and thus had to be the spear head in blasting enemy Duhalde and his apocalyptic statements about next year elections and why not a military coup.

Last but not least, Duhalde's ill delivered message was not to scare with a coup, but rather to call upon the political establishment to agree of some sort of basic understanding, government and opposition, as happened in the last big crisis back in 2001/02 which was in effect steered by him, a Peronist, as interim president, and ex president Ricardo Alfonsin, a Radical. The consensus now is that the situation is far worse than in 2002, because the five month quarantine has been unable to contain the spread of the virus and the closedown of the economy, with the massive loss of jobs and closed businesses has become dramatic.