Opposition uses Brazil crisis to point finger at president

Ex-president Mauricio Macri and PRO chair Patricia Bullrich have compared last weekend’s attacks on government institutions in Brasilia with the impeachment launched by President Alberto Fernández against the Supreme Court.

The general repudiation was joined by Macri, who began by saying:”i repudiate the violent actions registered in Brazil where a mob invaded the presidential palace, the Supreme Court building and Congress, jeopardising peace and democratic stability in that country. My solidarity with President Lula at this moment.”

However, the opposition leader then went on to tweet:.”the episode sounds an alert as to the global fragility of democratic institutions, which can be overrun by a horde as in Brazil or, as is happening right now in Argentina with the Supreme Court, via equally brutal anti-democratic mechanisms.”

Macri then recalled the incidents in late 2017 outside Congress when his government was trying to push through a pension reform.

“We must not forget that the Kirchnerism so moved today by the events in Brazil are the same people who in 2017 organised, promoted and protagonised the violent assault on Congress,” he accused, closing with a call for respect for democracy.

Bullrich was more succinct. “DEMÓCRATS WITH OTHER COUNTRIES AND AUTHORITARIAN HERE. Here they want to storm the Supreme Court and destroyed Congress with 14 tons of stones. The day they withdraw the impeachment of the Supreme Court, they may comment on what is happening in Brazil,” she declared.

Deputy María Eugenia Vidal, a presidential hopeful against Bullrich and City Mayor Horacio

Rodríguez Larreta in the Juntos por el Cambio PASO primaries, also attacked Fernández, declaring: “A president bent on steamrolling the Judiciary has no authority to accuse anybody of coup-mongering.”

President Fernández rebutted these attacks this week via a video showing images the assassination attempt against Vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and a photograph of ex-presidents Macri and Jair Bolsonaro, together.

“They seek to discourage those who wish to take over the country by speaking of our history as a failure. What they fail to appreciate is democracy, they want a country for just a few people, without public health, without education, with courts which serve the powerful and without rights for those who work,” he declared in response.