Maria Laura Avignolo
08/01/2020 - 17:05
- Clarín.com
- Politics
A hectic first 24 hours in Paris . Former President Mauricio Macri , his wife Juliana and daughter Antonia moved from the La Reserve hotel, the most expensive and exclusive in Paris, after some media published the photos of the luxurious 19th century palace they had chosen for their two days at the French capital, and give an account of the prices of their suites.
The same Saturday they left for the Nice airport to begin their summer holidays on the Cote d'Azur and fulfill the "free quarantine" in the Mediterranean Sea, as a powerful French businessman, a friend of the couple , told Clarín .
Despite the 40 degrees in Paris, the couple strolled down St Germain boulevard on Friday and met some Argentines, who greeted them.
The receptionist at La Réserve was blunt: "I don't have any passengers with those names at the hotel" on Saturday afternoon.
The selection of the La Réserve hotel, at 42 avenue Gabriel in Paris, was not the most fortunate decision of the former president.
Next to the Champs-Elysées, a few steps from the Foubourg St Honoré, is the discreet refuge of princes, stars of the show who do not want to live in an ostentatious palace but refined and discreet, far from the eyes.
The interior of the luxurious hotel that Macri had to leave.
Decorated by the famous Jacques García, there are more suites than rooms and their prices start at 1,500 euros each, with probable discounts due to the pandemic.
With a swimming pool, which is a rare luxury in this city and a spa, La Réserve is the Parisian chic of the Belle Epoque. But it is not the hotel for a former president of a country on the brink of default like Argentina, with the pandemic that left 5,929 new positive cases in the last shoras, totaling 191,302 across the country.
Another view of the luxurious hotel where Macri stayed
A scenario that allows the ruling party to question his travels and the opportunity of his official trip to Zurich for his job at FIFA, on a full European vacation.
A millionaire businessman, historically accustomed to large hotels, Macri detests that they indicate the status of his accommodation. He considers that it is his natural decision, that he has the right to choose how and where he lives because he pays from his own budget.
But the timing of the former Argentine president to choose the most exclusive and private hotel in Paris exposed to the elements a political awkwardness , which even bothered and astonished his peers at PRO and Cambiemos.
In the midst of a pandemic in Buenos Aires, on the day of the highest death toll, Macri chose to come to France to fulfill the 14-day European quarantine that Switzerland requires him to go to perform functions at the Fifa Foundation in Zurich. But it is in France, where there is no mandatory confinement or swapping for Argentina at the airport.
The La Réserve hotel.
Macri's freedoms are legitimate but difficult to accept if you want to be the leader of the opposition. Even his classmates question his sense of opportunity.
His trip to France on vacation and "free" quarantine weaken him. It reveals his weaknesses and once again his contempt for the rules and customs of politics.
It is probably the most politically expensive trip of his career in power, in his attempt to oppose Alberto and Cristina Fernández, with a divided Cambiemos, which only partially supports him and given the need to present a united front in the face of the attacks.
Alberto Fernández's government uses the engineer's vulnerability to try to demolish him for his trip to Paris with political opportunism. They forget that President Cristina Kirchner used hotels as luxurious and expensive as Macri , on her official or work visits to Paris, paid by all Argentine taxpayers and no one accounting for their reserved expenses.
From the Hotel Meurice to the luxurious George V, the former president enjoyed Parisian palaces like the engineer Macri. But we all pay for them.
The Parisian Kirchnerists, gathered in Paris in Argentina, will meet on Monday the 3rd, at 18 in the afternoon, in the Trocadero square, to protest against the presence of Macri in the French capital, “in full confinement in Argentina and in the midst of the judicial process that involves him ” .