On Monday, a holiday in Argentina, the Latin American country experienced its first protests against the isolation measures. In one of them, about 150 people gathered in the historic center of Buenos Aires to protest for the first time against the extent of the confinement, with which the government is trying to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. What could be seen as a result of natural anguish in a country that will complete 80 days in quarantine (until June 7th), ended up irritating President Alberto Fernandez
Clarín columnist and editor Eduardo Van Der Kooy wrote that, out of intolerance or irritation, the result of this is that the president has “Kirchnerized” his speech, defending the intervention of the State as a magical solution to any problem.
According to Kooy, not all protests experienced on Monday, had the same focus. The mentioned small march towards Plaza de Mayo, according to him, had some components of anarchism. A caravan in Córdoba was actually a demonstration in favor of the doctors. And a small protest in Tigre, a city in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, “seemed to meet more genuine conditions: demand for work with defense of individual liberties”. Kooy said that neighbors had been intimidated to remain in their homes by a local police chief.
“Alberto’s reformism also underwent some mutation. In symphony with what is usually the Kirchner story. Faced with any problem, the President brandishes state intervention as a magical solution. He brought it up in a strikingly paternal way when last Saturday he advised people to take shelter in their homes. Up to there the state hand would go, he promised. In addition to the meaning of the proposal, there would be the gap between the sayings and the facts. As never before during this pandemic, the State has been left naked in its ineffectiveness and impotence,” wrote Kooy.
According to journalists and analysts, the president does not know how to deal with the population’s natural distress at the moment. “We already knew that questions about the economy irritated him, now we also know that he does not ignore the anguish. At times, in that kind of game of the good and bad police that the two Fernándezes make of power, the pluralist Fernández plays peace with kerosene in hand,” wrote Nicolás José Isola, from La Nacíon.
