Cristina Kirchner, twice president of Argentina and today leader of the opposition, has been in her home since Tuesday. The judges who sentenced her to six years in jail and perpetual disqualification to exercise public office granted her the benefit of house prison and formal the sentence. They also decided to communicate their decision with a letter, saving the transfer to federal courts, scheduled for Wednesday. Thus neutralized the effects of “the greatest popular manifestation in history”, as Peronism had promised to accompany its leader towards their final judicial destiny.
Peronism, the main opponent of the Ultra -Right government of Javier Milei, had summoned for Wednesday unions, related governors and social movements to join a large march that had to travel the five kilometers that separate the house of the former president, in the neighborhood of Constitution, in the city of Buenos Aires, with the building of Comodoro Py, headquarters of the federal courts.
“We want you not to have inconvenience with your prison and we will be a guarantee with a permanent mobilization in the streets, until you are again at home to fulfill the injustice of this conviction,” the general secretary of the Justicialist Party (PJ), Teresa García, told international journalists. The organizers warned that there will be progress although Kirchner finally does not leave their home.
Pause to internal wars
It is, basically, to send a warning message to the Casa Rosada, but also to the multiple internal currents that today divide the party founded by Juan Perón 80 years ago. Kirchner is attributed to himself the responsibility of a reorganization after the 2023 electoral wand against Milei, but clashes with the aspirations of those who ask for a renewal, such as the governor of the powerful province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof. The former president’s prison pauses the fratricidal war, without even clearing the strength of the truce.
The Argentine Justice that investigated the direction of public works in the Patagonian province of Santa Cruz, cradle of Kirchnerism, in favor of an entrepreneur named Lázaro Báez, already imprisoned for corruption. Báez was a humble bank cashier when he became a millionaire as an entrepreneur of the construction of Néstor Kirchner, at that time governor.
The former president’s defense said from the first day he was facing a case of lawfarethat is, the use of justice as a weapon to pursue opposition politicians. His lawyer, Carlos Beraldi, said they will take the case before the Inter -American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). “It is a ruling that affects the democratic system. The Court has established as imputation criteria that condemns a president for acts in which he did not intervene, for being separated from his functions,” as is the execution of public works, he said.
From the Kirchner environment they already assumed that the judges would grant him home prison, a right that has to be over 70 years, but that is not automatic. In the Argentine Federal Penitentiary System there are 12,000 prisoners, of which only 900 are women. Of all of them, only one is in a common prison, convicted of human trafficking. Beraldi warned that the defense would not accept “any kind of humiliation or lack of respect for an ex -president and also a woman.” “We expect a brief procedure and return to your home,” he said before correspondents.
If you are finally granted the arrest at home, it will subtract knowing in what conditions. The defense requested that Kirchner does not carry an electronic anklet – they remembered that as a former president he has permanent custody of the Federal Police – that the visits are not limited and that he leaves it to the third floor of the third floor from which he greets the hundreds of followers who crowd in the street to support it. What there is no doubt is that Kirchner will continue to do politics.
