Before getting on a plane and landing in the United States to take a joyous photo with Donald Trump, Javier Milei advanced the political decision to polarize Argentines between his Government and the figure of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The far-right president ordered the withdrawal of the special pensions that she received as former president, former vice president and, also, widow of former president Néstor Kirchner. The Government announced that unprecedented measures few hours after a second instance court ratified the six-year prison sentence against Fernández de Kirchner for acts of corruption. The Casa Rosada, as the Executive is known, justified the measure by remembering that the benefit, close in its entirety to 20,000 dollarss, is granted “as consideration to the honor, merit and good performanceor” of those who passed through the presidency. The new sentence, which if ratified by the Supreme Court, would mean compliance with house arrest, for being over 70 years old. According to the Government, this judicial situation justifies that Fernández de Kirchner stop receiving that considerable sum. “You are so off axis that the little dictator is appearing that you always carried inside,” responded the former president.
The judicial sentence once again provoked enthusiasm approvals from the conservative political spectrum and rejection of those who find an exemplary case of political persecution through the courts. The step taken by Milei is observed as a determination of capitalist anarcho to divide the waters in society, in view of the parliamentary elections of 2025. The reduction of inflation, which fell below three points in October, is its main banner economic. Visceral anti-Kirchnerism constitutes at this point a pillar of political argumentation.
“Now it turns out that, in addition to being head of the Executive Branch, you want to create and preside over a Court of Honor to judge the honor, merit and good performance in office of the former presidents and former presidents of the Nation. And to top it off… A Court with powers to set and apply penalties accessory to those of the Judiciary? “, Fernández de Kirchner reacted between irony and indignation. “And, then… Do you want to associate with the judicial mafia to persecute me too? Are you that afraid of me? I tell you that I was very afraid of the dictator (Jorge) Videla. But you only make me feel sorry for you and embarrass you.”
The presidential spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, was in charge of informing the country that pensions, including widow’s pensions, had been cancelled. The spokesperson, known for his aggressiveness and rudeness, gave a moral and accounting reason. “This means, for Argentines, a saving of about 21,827,624.65 pesos.”
The Ministry of Human Capital assured that, although the measure “does not constitute an accessory sanction to the criminal sentence,” it defended its application due to the “indignity which implies having been considered the author criminally responsible for the crime of fraudulent administration to the detriment of the public administration”.
The former president’s long intervention in X was full of sarcasm towards Milei. “I know you like Artificial Intelligence (I like it a lot too) and, since in a few days you are going to the US and you are going to see Elon Musk, why don’t you ask him how we can create a Judicial Branch with Artificial Intelligence? Can you imagine the money that the State and all Argentines would save? Fernández de Kirchner, who also wants to position herself as the only alternative to the extreme right, attached to her text ChatGPT’s response when asked to analyze the ruling against him and he threw a “objective view of the inconsistencies that this ruling has.”
Exception with Menem
The newspaper ‘La Nación’ recalled that Zulema Yoma, widow of Carlos Menem, collects her pension despite the fact that the former president had aa second instance conviction for corruption. According to the publication, in Casa Rosada they assured that the Yoma situation was “out of the question” and that “its benefit would not be touched” despite the fact that there were also those who sought to put forward technical arguments to justify the decision. Menem has become into a hero of the extreme right. During his administration (1989-99), Argentina took a profoundly neoliberal turn based on privatizations, market deregulation, the unrestricted alliance with the United States and heavy external debt. The Menemist era. had a strong social cost.
Ideological radicalism
The confrontation with Fernández de Kirchner is part of an ideological package that is also expressed on the external front. Three days after voting at the UN against a resolution for the rights of indigenous peoples, and 24 hours after withdrawing from Cop29 for considering that climate change is an invention of “cultural Marxism”, Argentina was involved in another controversy when it was the only country to oppose a document presented by the organization on November 11 in support of the intensification of efforts to “prevent” and “eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls in the public and private spheres.
The initiative had been promoted by Spain, Germany, Chile, Bolivia, Italy, Ukraine, Uruguay and Venezuela, among others. The countries had committed to also confront “trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation.” The Secretary of Worship and Civilization, Nahuel Sotelo, said that the rejection is based on the “radical feminist approach” of the document. Addressing the problem of gender violence, he added, “does not have any scientific evidence.”
