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Editor's Note: Pedro Brieger is an Argentine journalist and sociologist, author of more than seven books and contributor to publications on international issues. He currently serves as director of NODAL, a portal dedicated exclusively to the news of Latin America and the Caribbean. He collaborated with different national media such as Clarín, El Cronista, La Nación, Página / 12, Profile and for magazines such as News, Somos, Le Monde Diplomatique and Panorama. Throughout his career, Brieger won important awards for his informative work on Argentine radio and television.
(CNN Spanish) - On Tuesday, August 20, the president of Argentina Mauricio Macri introduced his new Minister of Finance and at one point told those who were there: "Thank you for joining us so early this Monday."
Beyond the occasional jokes because the previous day had been a national holiday, the truth is that in the room there were people with ministerial ranks and of utmost importance in the public service. Thank you that they had arrived "so early" when it was close to 9 in the morning it seems that he and the people who accompany him in the difficult task of managing the country do not usually work early.
Macri is also very fond of public jokes when he meets with presidents of other countries and it must be recognized that he is not the only one who does them.
The question that always appears is whether in a position so important that it defines the destiny of millions of people who occupy these positions can be handled with the same ease and dissatisfaction as when they occupied minor positions.
It is clear that no, because the sayings of a person impact according to the position they occupy. Donald Trump as a TV show host or as an entrepreneur could make jokes or comments of all kinds, even racists, but the expressions of a successful and vulgar businessman were considered. When he tweets as president that he will not build a gold tower in Greenland it is not even a bad joke, as was demonstrated by the harsh response of the Danish Prime Minister and the subsequent cancellation of his scheduled trip to that country.
The day Jair Bolsonaro voted in favor of the dismissal of President Dilma Rousseff in April 2016 was an unknown deputy claiming the figure of her torturer, Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra. Three years later, as president, he received his widow and described him as a hero. If a president qualifies a torturer convicted in 2008 for his crimes committed during the dictatorship, he endorses on behalf of the State what this person was doing.
The impact that a president's words have on society are decisive for current and future education, and on many occasions those who occupy that place seem to forget it.
In the last century, Latin America was associated with bizarre dictators who owned absolute power, ridiculed to some extent in the satirical film "Bananas" by Woody Allen. However, it can be said that they were local leaders without great international projection and little known outside their world.
The globalization of the mass media and the immediacy of social networks means that today any event can become a trend, either when the president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte says he was "cured" of homosexuality with beautiful women, or if the Former president of the Czech Republic keeps a pen in an official ceremony in his pocket, an image that went viral.
Of course, humor — or ridicule — is part of life and existed at all times. In any case, we can ask ourselves if those who occupy the highest places in a country are aware of their responsibility for their place. And many times it seems that no.