According to footage from multiple televisions, the man pointed a handgun at Ms Kirchner’s head, just a few feet away, with no shots going off, as she signed books and mingled with sympathizers, who came to wait for her at the bottom of her home, in the Recoleta district.
“I saw this arm spring up over my shoulder behind me with a weapon, and with people around me it was controlled”, told AFP on the spot a support of Ms. Kirchner, who did not have did not wish to give his name, and that the TV images clearly show participating in the brief melee.
Police officers then seized the suspect, led him into a police car in an adjoining street, immediately surrounded by a thick cordon of police officers. She left shortly after under the shouts and boos of several dozen people present, AFP noted.
– Of “enormous gravity” –
“Cristina is alive, because for a reason that has not yet been technically confirmed, the weapon that contained five bullets did not fire despite having been triggered,” the president said in a speech a few hours. after the incident.
The Head of State denounced a fact “of enormous gravity, the most serious to have occurred since our country regained democracy” in 1983. He announced that he had decreed a national holiday on Friday, “so that in peace and concord the Argentine people can express themselves in defense of life, of democracy, and in solidarity with our vice-president”.
On the spot, the intersection in front of the building where Ms. Kirchner lives was quickly cordoned off after the attack by “crime scene” tapes, and the police were taking samples.
According to several Argentine media, the suspect is a 30-year-old of Brazilian nationality, unconfirmed information from official sources.
Hundreds of activists have been gathering every evening for ten days in front of Cristina Kirchner’s home, to show their support for the former head of state (2007-2015), currently on trial for fraud and corruption.
On August 22, the prosecution requested a 12-year prison sentence and life ineligibility against her in this trial, which concerns the awarding of public contracts in her stronghold of Santa Cruz (south), during her two presidential terms. .
In a highly polarized Argentine political landscape, the indictment gave rise to several demonstrations of support for Ms. Kirchner by the hard core of the Peronist left of which she is the figurehead. Rallies took place last week in several cities. And each evening, several hundred worshipers gathered near his home, singing and chanting their support.
They were only a few dozen Thursday evening at the time of the incident, and the atmosphere remained strangely calm in the following hours. Among them, Martin Frias, 48, a longtime Peronist, who was sorry to AFP about a political “climate of violence” in the country. “Violence in the words, which lead to violent acts”.
– “What a mess is brewing!” –
Over the hours, after the announcement of the attack, the crowd at the crossroads of Juncal and Uruguay streets had swelled to a few hundred people, in a noisy but uneventful atmosphere, with a fetish song “If they touch Cristina, what a mess is brewing!”
Thursday evening’s incident was immediately condemned by the entire government camp as well as by the opposition coalition “Juntos por el cambio” (Together for change).
The leader of the right-wing opposition and successor to Mrs Kirchner in the presidency Maurico Macri (2015-2019) expressed his “absolute condemnation of the attack suffered by Cristina Kirchner, which fortunately had no consequences for the vice- president”.
Abroad, several Latin American leaders, on the left in the first place, reacted in the evening. “The assassination attempt against Vice President Cristina Kirchner deserves the rejection and condemnation of the entire continent,” Chilean President Gabriel Boric tweeted.
“All my solidarity with comrade @CFKArgentina, victim of a fascist criminal who does not know how to respect differences and diversity,” said ex-president and presidential candidate of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Adored by part of the Peronist left, a divisive personality hated by the opposition, Cristina Kirchner, 69, remains seven years after her departure from the presidency an influential figure in Argentine politics, one year from a presidential election for which she did not make her intentions known.
A verdict at her trial is not expected until late 2022. Even if convicted, she enjoys parliamentary immunity as President of the Senate and may not go to jail or even run in the general elections of October 2023.
