Alberto Fernández and Carlos Menem: a bond that had been strengthened and the visit that was not

Nicolas Wiñazki

02/14/2021 7:45 PM

• Clarín.com

• Politics

Updated 02/14/2021 7:45 PM

Towards the end of last year, after a day of work at the Casa Rosada, President Alberto Fernández got into his Toyota Corolla with his spokesman,

Juan Pablo Biondi

.

They traveled alone to a hitherto unknown destination.

The Los Arcos Clinic, in Palermo, where the national senator Carlos Menem was trying to recover from various physical problems.

Fernández wanted to visit the former president, already admitted to that health center where he finally died this Sunday.

Fernández and Biondi were received by the Riojan's daughter, Zulemita, who was accompanied by another close friend of that family.

Alberto couldn't see Carlos that day.

He was no longer in physical condition to dialogue with his visitors.

Fernández had spoken with Menem, by phone, on December 17, 2020. That day the former president was clear-headed.

At that same moment, the team that the Rioja fan, River Plate, was playing for the Libertadores Cup against Nacional de Montevideo, Fernández told C5N.

It was a short but friendly talk.

Carlos and Alberto respected each other.

Carlos Menem, Zulemita and Eduardo Duhalde, the day that Alberto Fernández assumed the presidency.

The current President had been a Menem official during 1989 and 1995. He held the not so secondary position of Superintendent of Insurance of the Nation.

Fernández coordinated the state policies that regulate insurance companies from 1989 to 1995. He

was young and Menem marked him

.

Fernández revealed that as President he sought several times the advice of his former political boss, whom he had respect and affection for despite maintaining political differences with him that, as often happens among Peronists, are never entirely decisive enough to break ties between " classmates".

According to sources from the Casa Rosada, Alberto had strengthened the bond with Carlos in his year in power through the latter's daughter, Zulemita.

She surprised at the end of 2020 when she announced that she intended to launch into partisan politics.

Fernández was one of the leaders who encouraged her to embark on that adventure.

The relationship between Alberto and Carlos became so firmly established in the recent past that when Menem's health entered its final decline, Fernández made the Presidential Unit doctor,

Federico Saavedra

, available to the Riojan's family

.

Zulemita Yoma even accompanied Fernández in the presidential helicopter to an official ceremony at a plant of the Toyota carmaker.

She has a dealership that has become one of the most sold units of these vehicles in Argentina.

Alberto, who at the beginning of the Menem administration reached the privacy of the Quinta de Olivos through the presidential brother-in-law,

Emir Yoma

, recognizes until today that the former president gave him his first public position in the Executive Power, and that he always It gave him freedom to manage within the general guidelines of the Government plan, and it also made him feel confident to manage even though he was a young leader at that time.

Fernández left the Insurance Superintendency in 1995 and then militated with former President Eduardo Duhalde, then with former Minister of Economy Domingo Cavallo until he reached the teams of a Santa Cruz governor who was always elected on a PJ ballot that Carlos Menem He headed in the presidential formula: Néstor Kirchner.

Today's vice Cristina Fernández was also elected national legislator in lists of the Menemista PJ until the K couple began to confront the Rioja.

Like the President, who recognizes his past and defends his public work in the 1990s, many leaders identified as "Kirchnerists"

were originally "Menemists."

Stages of evolution of Justicialism.

As the former Menem militant, the auditor Miguel Pichetto, often says, "to speak of betrayals in politics does not seem correct to me. What is described as' betrayal is only a fracture with the past ...".

Among several cases, the current management of the PJ is made up of the Secretary of Strategic Affairs, Gustavo Béliz, former Minister of the Interior in the presidencies of the recently deceased former president.

Like the current ambassador to Brazil, former deputy and twice Governor K of Buenos Aires, Daniel Scioli, entered politics from nautical sports at the impulse of the Rioja.

Chancellor Felipe Solá was also Menem's Secretary of Agriculture for a decade.

There are many more cases of K leaders who were "raised" politically alongside "Carlos."

The current Minister of Labor, Claudio Moroni, was the one who replaced Fernández in the Insurance Superintendency when he resigned in 1995. The current official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Malvinas case, Daniel Filmus, was in charge of education in the Buenos Aires city government by Carlos Grosso.

An ultra-Christian who does not proudly recognize his former militancy with Menem is now Senator Oscar Parrilli, the vice-right hand.

He became so involved with what he himself would describe as "neoliberalism" that as a Menem deputy he was the

informant

member

of the controversial privatization of YPF

.

It was shortly after reaching the presidency that Alberto showed his appreciation and respect for Carlos.

She invited Zulemita Yoma and former presidential secretary

Alberto Kohan

to the Casa Rosada

: she had planned with her to install the bust of Papa Menem in the hall of the government headquarters where former democratic presidents are remembered with marble sculptures.

The idea of ​​both, who dialogue often, was to do an act in tribute to the Rioja with him in life.

Menem's health postponed the realization of that project, which will no longer be as it was conceived but will happen sooner rather than later.

Who is also an interlocutor between the government of the Frente de Todos and the Menem family is the Secretary General of the Presidency, Julio Vitobello, who worked in the cabinet of

Carlos Corach's

Menemista Interior Ministry

.

Fernández decreed this Sunday three days of national mourning for the death of Menem.

And he spoke with the vice president, Cristina, for the head of the Senate to organize the wake of the senator for La Rioja in Congress.

President Fernández had with Menem not only a common past in the initial part of his political career.

He was also united with him precisely the province in which the former president was born.

The foster father of the current President,

Carlos Galíndez

, was from La Rioja.

He was born in the town of Chilecito.

Fernández spent long summer weeks in that city of oppressive heat but that he never forgot.

Even the father of his foster grandfather, Manuel Galíndez, was a senator for La Rioja.

But he was active in the UCR.

Fernández always reminds him of his most trusted officials, and revealed it this Sunday also on television but with a more nuanced version than that repeated by his friends, that his mother, Celia Pérez, was a staunch antimenemist.

This was until he met Menem himself in an act in which the then President presented his son with an award because he was chosen in 1992 as one of the "outstanding young people" in Argentina.

Celia Pérez spoke in that ceremony face to face with Menem.

Fernández's mother was captivated by the

Riojan's

charisma

.

From then on, his son, the current President, listened for years and years to those maternal comments that tend to resemble, in one sense, an imperative suggestion: "Alberto, please, do not criticize Carlos, do not speak ill of him ... ".

On Sunday, very early in the morning, Fernández was sleeping at the Quinta de Olivos when a message arrived on his special telephone.

It was Zulemita Yoma.

"Papa died. Call me."

Alberto then spoke with Carlos's daughter.

Look also

Carlos Menem's estate, according to his latest affidavit: $ 7.5 million

Carlos Menem died: “He was grabbed by my mother's hand”, the grief of Zulemita Menem