Crossing accusations between Jorge Macri and Mariano Recalde over incidents in Congress

Last Thursday, while the Chamber of Deputies was debating the agreement with the IMF, a group of hooded men stoned the front of Congress, smashing the windows in Cristina Kirchner's office in the Senate, and clashed with the City Police. These incidents prompted mutual accusations between a sector of government officials and the Buenos Aires authorities, who were in charge of the security operation. In this context, Jorge Macri and Mariano Recalde starred in a new chapter of crosses on Twitter.

“For Kirchnerism when violence is functional for them, they protect it, and when they suffer it, they express it 'with sadness'. In the face of the pedrada in 2017, deputy Recalde of the FDT, presented an amparo to limit the possibility of police using security elements”, began the Minister of Government of the City of Buenos Aires.

“Thanks to effort, sustained investment over time and the constant incorporation of technology, today the City has the lowest crime rates in the past 27 years and is the second safest capital in America behind Ottawa. The City is committed to security, which is why today we present the Crime Map, a tool that we continue to use and that allows us to collect criminal data to know its evolution and manage security in an agile and intelligent way”, continued Jorge Macri, emphasizing integral aspects of security in the Federal Capital.

“Facing crime is a challenge that must meet all of us together. Therefore, next week we will be signing agreements with different municipalities of the AMBA, which also make a great effort and sustain investment, to work in a coordinated way for security”, concluded the Buenos Aires official.

A couple of hours later, Recalde replied: “In the security camera video published yesterday @CFKArgentina you can see that the City Police took 20 minutes to arrive, with a surprising parsimony in the face of a direct attack on the Vice President of the Nation. But Kirchnerism is also to blame...” .

“On Thursday, the City Police were able to deter the small group of protesters who threw stones without resorting to violence, which is the only thing that limited the protection presented in 2017. The delay of the police in the face of such a serious event remains unexplained. The images are clear. The assaults could have been avoided if the City ordered the immediate intervention of its police. It was their inaction, and not the impossibility of repressing, that allowed the attack to take place,” added the current national senator of the Frente de Todos.

Finally, Recalde said: “1) The demonstrators can be dispersed without resorting to repression, contrary to what they did in December 2017. 2) To this day they cannot justify the police absence while the attack was being organized and launched”.

In this context, on Tuesday morning the Minister of Security of the City, Marcelo D'Alessandro, announced that this Thursday, when the same bill is being debated in the Senate, they will carry out a special operation so that the incidents of last week are not repeated. “We are going to fence and use force to ensure the development of Congress, which is one of the pillars of democracy,” the official said.

D'Alessandro also assured that last week there were no fences in Parliament at the express request of Vice-President Cristina Kirchner, whose office was stone-attacked. “We have to define which side we are on: the violent or the non-violent,” he emphasized. “Cristina herself has called (referring to other opportunities) requesting that the fences be removed. What we are going to do next Thursday is to create a fence that allows us to have a lung so that the police can act faster, protect themselves and distinguish the violent from the non-violent ones to act accordingly,” added the Buenos Aires minister.

As a result, from the Administrative Secretary of the Upper House, they issued an official statement on the subject. “The Administrative Secretary of the Senate of the Nation categorically denies that any of the authorities of this House have communicated with government officials of the City of Buenos Aires to request that security fences not be placed last Thursday, March 10, while the Chamber of Deputies was in session to discuss the agreement with the IMF”. They also said that “there was also no communication requesting that there be no external fences during the activity scheduled for this week in the Senate.”

However, they admitted that on one occasion the vice-president communicated to remove the security vines. “The only communication that the President of the Senate, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, had with the then Vice Chief of Government of Buenos Aires, Diego Santilli, was on August 26, 2020, on the occasion of the Senate's consideration of a draft reform of the judiciary. At that time, and in a timely manner, the city was asked to remove the fences they were putting up at that time and which had not been requested either, since a mass call was not planned. This telephone communication was widely disseminated in the media,” they said.

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