MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The pandemic has cost Argentina “133 times the Malvinas war”

On Sunday the Argentine government held a special ceremony to honor the memory of the over 90.000 dead because of the pandemic

Argentine opposition lawmaker Mario Negri said he was very much concerned by the way the country is addressing the second wave of coronavirus and asked if the government had any idea how many Argentine lives the pandemic has taken, “133 times the Malvinas war.”

”I sincerely hope I'm wrong because I don't know if we will reach July 9th (Independence Day) with 100,000 coronavirus deaths“, the Lower House leader of the Radical party lawmakers expressed.

”There are many things that are going to hang from the government's back whether they like it or not. They will be accountable, Do you have an idea how many Argentine lives the pandemic has taken, 133 times the Malvinas war“, underlined Negri to the Buenos Aires media.

On Sunday the Argentine government organized a ”reflection“ ceremony to honour the memory of the over 90,000 Argentines who died because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Headed by president Alberto Fernandez, his cabinet and artists who support the government, the event was held at the Buenos Aires Kirchner Cultural Center. Candles were lit, music was played and Fernandez read a poem.

However, Negri blasted Fernandez for the vaccination campaign. ”He must tell us what is going to happen with the 66 million doses promised by former health minister González Garcia, who is now drinking beer in Madrid chatting with friends, while six million Argentines are uncertain about the second Sputnik jab“

The former minister was filmed in Spain by the Argentine media enjoying the summer with friends, the same man who first doubted the Covid 19 virus would reach Argentina, later promised millions of vaccines that never arrived, the most notorious the Pfizer shots deal which fell through still in suspicious conditions, and the so-called VIP vaccine centres for friends and buddies of the Fernandez-Cristina Kirchner regime.

Further on Negri underlined the irrelevance in which Argentina has fallen, the so-called ”standalone“ status according to the Morgan Stanley Capital International, MSCI, financial index ”an irrelevance we are paying with our impoverished economy and ever so isolated from the serious world“

”This government is characterized by a raft of ongoing contradictions, I've never seen so many and at the same time. They have geared the country to irrelevance and insignificance, there is no course and we don't know where we are going“.

Finally, Negri also criticized the Fernandez administration for keeping silent on the repeated human rights abuses committed by Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega. ”They've messed up Argentina's human rights policy in supporting these two dictators“.

And more specifically on foreign minister Felipe Solá, ”he certainly is not the man I knew when he was a member of the Lower House, I doubt he knows where he stands and what's he is doing“. Solá did not sign a UN resolution calling for free and fair elections in the two countries and argued that when considering countries, ”Argentina acts on its own, not as part of a gang of bullies (about the UN)”.