“I hope you have a good explanation for all this”Alberto Fernández told Ginés González García, on Thursday, already close to midnight, in the first and only telephone conversation that they were going to have until the scandal became public. “I’m going to explain everything to you”, answered González García. Alberto was at the Olivos residence. Ginés, in his department of Puerto Madero. The minister had 24 hours in office. I did not know or intuit it. He was even surprised by the call.
For a long time, the President had learned from his advisers that Clarion he was working on a note about putting together a kind of VIP Vaccination for friends of power. Ginés’ first reaction to the presidential call was to say that only those who were going to travel with him to Mexico this Sunday to accompany him in the celebration of the 200 years of independence of that country had been vaccinated. It was an explanation that from the beginning raised doubts for a simple reason: the inoculation is not immediate. What was the use of vaccinating them if the idea was to protect the head of state?
Even so, an Albertist official then contacted Ginés and asked him to release a statement from the Ministry of Health early Friday to explain who had been vaccinated on the occasion of the trip. They believed that the trip could be used as an excuse. Ginés refused. And, as the hours passed, he got very angry.
At 1:45 pm on Friday, with the idea of throwing him out on his head, Alberto walked back to the Casa Rosada from the Kirchner Cultural Center. It came from the launch of the Economic and Social Council, one of the government’s big bets for this year. He spent a few minutes talking to a woman who stopped him on the street. His trusted men had been summoned to his office. They were the same people who had been with him in that same office, around noon, exploring a way out of the crisis before going to the event. But now it was time to make a final decision. The climate had become rarefied after journalist Horacio Verbitsky declared that he had been vaccinated thanks, he said, to his old friend Ginés.
Santiago Cafiero, Gustavo Beliz, Julio Vitobello and Juan Pablo Biondi reviewed the journalist’s statements on their cell phones. One of them commented that Verbitsky had left no code unbroken. But that was not the center of the dilemmas. They wondered how far the VIP vaccinated names went. “I want that list“, the President would ask several times throughout the day. Ginés, despite the insistent calls from the Casa Rosada, refused to send it. It would later be learned that it also included a businessman and his family, legislators and” friendly “doctors. This, indeed, is the tip of the ball, the list would be very long.
Fernández was impatient. The television in his office was off. He had chosen to hear every news from his spokesperson, who came and went with the news. At one point, in the middle of the deliberations, Alberto was subjected to a swab. The President cursed what was happening to him and Ginés’ behavior upset him more.
From Río Gallegos, on his 68th birthday, Cristina asked for details by chat. Alberto, of course, gave them to him. Those who were aware of that communication did not comment. The vice president had had a morning with dozens of displays of affection, public and private. The mood changed as events transcended.
“Tell Ginés that now I want his download in writing“Alberto ordered Cafiero. The chief of staff spoke at least four times with the minister. It was not an easy situation for him. He knew what was coming. He has known González García since he was a child because he was Antonio Cafiero’s minister between 1988 and 1991 and he used to see him on his grandfather’s birthdays in the house of San Isidro.Cafiero did not shed any tears just because he made efforts to contain them.
The waiters arrived with plates of Milanese for a late lunch, except for Vitobello, the secretary general of the presidency, who always chooses fish. Beliz was evicted because he saw the CCK launch fade in the media, and preferred to go to lunch elsewhere. So did Biondi, who went downstairs to eat empanadas with his team of collaborators. Alberto, Cafiero and Vitobello were left debating what to do. The conversation always revolved around the same thing: Why didn’t Ginés’s explanation come?
There wasn’t. “We are getting worse. This cannot be stopped”, recognized an official who kept communicating by WhatsApp from a nearby office. “If this time a minister does not fly through the air we are fried”, He said. Even the journalists most familiar with the Kirchner project demanded resignations on Twitter. That was also talked about. Alberto had already decided to dismiss his minister. He asked Cafiero to be the one to tell him. Before, Fernández He contacted Cristina again to tell her the determination. He also anticipated that Carla Vizzotti was going to be the replacement.
Criticism rained down from Together for Change. The deputies Carmen Polledo, from the PRO, and the radical Jimena Latorre anticipated that they would get off the trip to Mexico as representatives of the opposition. Alberto asked Vitobello to contact Deputy Eduardo Valdés and Senator Jorge Taiana, from the Frente de Todos, to warn them that, since they were part of the VIP vaccinated list, they were marginalized from the trip. Taiana got it. Valdes no. Not only did he not get it. He got upset. It would be advisable to closely follow that long-standing relationship between Alberto and Valdés. Something seemed to break.
Before spreading his resignation text, Ginés had no choice but to send the written explanation to Fernández. In his discharge said the same thing that later made public: that he was responsible for the affair but accused his private secretary. And he maintained that he was in Entre Ríos on the day of the vaccinated. The discharge unleashed the ire of the Government’s staff.
After 9:30 p.m., Alberto retired to the Presidential Palace. He did not speak with Ginés but let him know that he was very hurt by the decision he had to make and transmitted that he continues to believe that he did a great job this year and two months in office. “Of excellence”, they said in their environment.
Ginés has no consolation. He thinks what he did was not so serious. And that will pay more social costs being in the plain. He understood this on Friday, at 10:15 p.m., when his driver left him for the last time at the door of the building where he lives. The residents of Puerto Madero who saw him arrive came out to the balconies with pans and made them ring.
The minister did not move his head. He walked wearily into the building. At dawn the Twitter profile changed. You no longer read the Minister of Health of the Nation. Now he presents himself as “sanitarista, Peronista, Racinguista at heart, father and grandfather”. The cell phone did not stop ringing, especially with messages from journalists who wanted to consult it. Everyone really wants to know what he has to say. So far nothing.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/ten-hours-in-alberto-fernandezs-office-anger-alibis-and-cristina-kirchner-in-the-chat/
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