Photo of presidential birthday party during lockdown shakes Argentina in runup to elections

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The leak of photos of the Argentine first lady’s birthday celebration at the presidential residence during the height of last year’s health restrictions has unleashed a scandal in the middle of the election campaign, a “mistake” for which the opposition intends to impeach Alberto Fernández.

The images, published on Friday (13) on the front pages of Argentina’s main newspapers, show a dozen people, including President Alberto Fernández, celebrating the birthday of his partner Fabiola Yanez.

Read also: Check out our coverage on Argentina

The photos were taken at the Olivos presidential residence, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in July 2020, when a presidential decree was in force in Argentina with harsh health restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, including a ban on social gatherings, under threat of being sanctioned.

“It is evident that there was an oversight, that a mistake was made, that it should not have happened and that it was wrong”, said Friday the Argentine Chief of Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, in radio declarations.

Cafiero pointed out that in those days, Olivos functioned as a “center of operations” of the government with official meetings, but that “on one occasion there was a social event that should not have happened.”

POLITICAL TRIAL

Given the public dissemination of the photos, a group of deputies of Juntos por el Cambio, the main opposition front in Argentina, presented this Friday in the Lower House a draft resolution proposing an impeachment trial against the President for alleged malfeasance and the possible commission of the crime of non-compliance with the duties of a public official in the exercise of his functions.

According to the bill,  the request for impeachment is for “the causes of poor performance in the management of the pandemic which now adds to the commission of a common crime, but of extreme sensitivity for all Argentines, of violation of the measures adopted by the competent authorities to prevent the spread of an epidemic”.

The opposition deputies asserted that the health policy of the governmen “has been plainly bad and full of irregularities” and that, despite “the longest quarantine in the world”, in the country, there are nearly 5 million infected and 108,000 deaths due to covid-19, “revealing with absolute and mortifying clarity that the management of the pandemic was disastrous.”

They also questioned the effects of health restrictions on the economy and education and the development of the vaccination campaign.

To this, they added an indictment for alleged violation of health restrictions.

“The situation has just been exposed to the public opinion that while the population was demanded a strict quarantine during 2020, with a ban on family gatherings of all kinds, including wakes, the President of the Nation and the First Lady celebrated birthdays and received people in person at the Olivos residence, again violating the restrictions imposed by the pandemic,” states the bill.

To push for an impeachment trial, two-thirds of the votes are needed in a Parliament where the ruling party is currently in the majority.

“Santiago Cafiero says ‘it was a mistake’. The mistake was that the photo was leaked. If this did not happen, they would never have accepted that the president celebrated his partner’s birthday -with champagne included- in the middle of quarantine, while the whole country was locked up,” said Mario Negro, head of the Juntos por el Cambio party in Congress.

POLITICAL “OPPORTUNISM”.

After recognizing the “mistake”, the Chief of Cabinet questioned the “political opportunism” of the opposition to push for an impeachment trial in the middle of the campaign for the September primaries and the legislative elections next November.

“Some who opposed every one of them (health) care measures, now tear their clothes and give moral lessons. (…) It is obvious that they are seeking to divert attention, trying to make electoral speculations with this”, said Cafiero in declarations to Radio 10.

For the Chief of Cabinet, the opposition is looking for “electoral gain” and is only trying to generate “scandals” to “hide” the management mistakes they made when they were in power.