• Argentina Assassination attempt in Argentina: they point a gun at Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's face but the gun is holstered

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Baltasar Garzón dedicated on Tuesday night in Buenos Aires emphatic support to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, twice president of Argentina and current vice president.

"Nothing was ever built with hatred, resentment, insult and lies," said the former president of the Spanish Government during the III World Forum on Human Rights. "We must not prosecute politics, because justice ends up being politicized," he added.

Garzón was emphatic in his support for the Peronist leader, sentenced in December to eight years in prison for defrauding the State: "That sentence is a legal aberration. There is not a single direct test in the 1600 pages, which I have read with great patience. The indications are valid or the bases of the sentences, but those indications have to be converted into evidence in the oral trial and here there is none, they are opinions, arguments empty of content. "

The meeting, held at the Kirchner Cultural Center (CCK), in the Argentine capital, brought together members of the Puebla Group, a debate forum of leftist leaders that includes several former presidents, including Bolivian Evo Morales, Ecuadorian Rafael Correa or Uruguayan José Mújica.

Fernández de Kirchner, victim of an attack from which she miraculously emerged unharmed in September 2022, was the star speaker, and did not disappoint her listeners: "I don't care if I'm going to be disqualified, if they're going to put me in jail, I don't care. What matters to me, fundamentally, is that we rebuild a democratic and constitutional state, in which the guarantees established by the constitution are not painted cardboard."

Zapatero dedicated heartfelt words to the Argentine vice president: "I was shocked that they wanted to kill you. I was shocked by Argentina and by you that political violence returned to this country that fought so hard for a democracy without political violence."

"Despite the lawfare, the truth will prevail. I have a reputation as an optimist. But have no doubt. No affliction, but peaceful and democratic courage."

The former Prime Minister praised Argentina's human rights policy. "A country without memory is a country without dignity. The 40 years of democracy have left a legacy of Argentina to the world, that of the struggle for human rights as no country has tried to do: memory, restoration and justice."

The former leader of the PSOE made a comment from Argentina's world title in the Qatar 2022 World Cup.



"Argentina doesn't just win world titles... Moment! But he has the title of best writer in Spanish, which is Jorge Luis Borges. And that of having been the country that in the last 40 years has fought best and most in favor of human rights."

"The Grandmothers and Mothers of May are a heritage of humanity forever," added Zapatero, who returned to the issue of the judicialization of politics.

"Never in my political career did I initiate a judicial action against my adversaries because I knew that I beat them at the polls, in Parliament and in the public debate that is what must be done in democracy (...) We must not prosecute politics, because it ends up politicizing justice and doing enormous damage to the institutions of law."

Garzón, who has a very close relationship with the widow of former President Néstor Kirchner, went the same way as Zapatero, in addition to transmitting to the hostess the greetings of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks who was isolated in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

"When the Judiciary becomes a Judicial Party, it is a political actor that does not operate on an equal footing with the rest of the parties."

According to the former judge, there is a "Judicial Party" that "does not operate with dialogue, but with the monopoly of state violence that it exercises against its political opponents."

"Lawfare is the prostitution of law because it abandons us, you choose who you want to eliminate and use all the mechanisms that should be used as guarantees as weapons against the political opponent."

Minutes earlier, Correa had launched a harsh attack against Clarín, Argentina's most widely read newspaper: "San Martín and Bolívar used the bugle to announce independence battles. Now that name represents the most retrograde and stubborn thing of the oligarchy."

Fernández de Kirchner faces other corruption cases, and although in December she assured that she would not run for any office, an important sector of Peronism pressures her to aspire again to the presidency.

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  • Argentina
  • Baltasar Garzón
  • Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
  • Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero