MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine VP points fingers at US, Macri and the IMF during Memory, Truth and Justice Day ceremony

The US helped both the military junta overthrow Isabel Perón and then the English during the 1982 war, said CFK. (Pic La Nacion)

Argentine Vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Wednesday headed a ceremony in Las Flores, a small town in the province of Buenos Aires, to mark a new anniversary of the coup d'état by the military Junta which overthrew the democratically elected government of Juan Perón's widow, María Estela Martínez (also known as Isabel Perón or simply Isabelita).

CFK did not commemorate the military uprising and its consequences of human rights violations -which nonetheless she did address- as much as she criticized the International Monetary Fund for the state of the current negotiations. “We cannot pay because we don't have the money,” said the former president (2007-2015). 

The national holiday, officially known as the National Day of Memory, for Truth and Justice, seemed to have heralded a déja-vu future for the country when, after the ceremony, the announcer referred to CFK as “Madam President” in a Freudian slip which went anything but unnoticed.

“If the political parties are not able to articulate a minimum agreement on structural issues such as external debt and the bi-monetary economy, it will be very difficult to govern Argentina, if not impossible,” said CFK, flanked by Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof and Lower House Majority Leader Máximo Kirchner, her son.

“With the terms and with the rates that are intended, it is not only unacceptable, it is a problem that we cannot pay because we do not have the money,” said CFK, who also blamed former President Mauricio Macri for borrowing from the IMF.

She underlined the importance of “Memory, Truth and Justice” and praised former President Raúl Alfonsín for promoting the trial of the junta leaders after the return of democratic rule in 1983 to “punish those who violated human rights,” as she underlined the negative role of the armed forces in the entire region and particularly in Argentina since 1930 and also the involvement of those private citizens who knocked on the barracks doors to encourage the uprising which led to their debts taken over by the State.

“Among those was the family and the economic group of ... we already know who (about Macri). Or do we not know that the Argentines, who complain about indebtedness had a lucky President, his family's multimillion-dollar debt (...) ended up nationalized?“ She called it ”a paradox” that the people of Argentina, whom she called otarios (dumb) wound up having to pay for the mismanagements of the wealthy.

Cristina Kirchner also highlighted the presidential administration of her late husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), during which and according to a World Bank report she quoted “the Argentine middle class doubled” their incomes.

The current Speaker of the Senate wondered “who would say that the only vaccines we have today are Russian and Chinese?”, forgetting an agreement to manufacture locally the Oxford/AstraZeneca version.

“Our political space was the only one that did not indebt Argentina and paid the debts of all the other governments,” said Cristina Kirchner and asked the IMF for “longer terms and a much lower interest rate.”

But she was quick to make it clear that “we are not talking about not paying.” She added that “we should all make an effort, especially those who have the responsibility of the ruling party and the particularly the opposition should insist that they give us a lower interest rate.

She also called the United States for a ”little gesture“ in favour of Argentina. In her view, the US supported the March 24 coup, then helped ”the English in the Malvinas War, and as if that were not enough, they were central to the fact that the Monetary Fund would violate all the articles of its statute“ where the representatives of the US government ”were fundamental because no other country has a chair in the Fund.“

She insisted that Macri would have not obtained such a loan from the IMF during the 2018 exchange crisis had it not been for ”the support of the United States.”