Walter Schmidt
02/20/2021 11:51 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/20/2021 12:12 PM
"You don't screw around with the vaccine,"
President Alberto Fernández shot angrily.
He was launching the Economic and Social Council together with part of his cabinet, businessmen, trade unionists and different political and social actors.
He considered it good news.
It lasted very little.
As soon as the act ended at the Kirchner Cultural Center, when undertaking the three hundred meter walk that separated it from the Casa Rosada, Santiago Cafiero, his Chief of Staff, alerted him:
─Alberto, look what is circulating.
It was beginning to emerge in the corridors of the Government that
Clarín
journalists
were behind details of the secret vaccination operation in the Ministry of Health.
When they arrived at Balcarce 50, around 13:30, Alberto and Cafiero
locked themselves in for lunch
and analyze the situation.
At that time, the audio of Horacio Verbitsky speaking on the radio about how he
processed a Sputnik V
blue by
calling Ginés
, which ended up triggering the case, was just beginning to go viral.
Angry, the president, the first thing he did was ask his then minister for a report on what loomed as a scandal: the VIP vaccination that was carried out at the headquarters of the Health Ministry, on 9 de Julio Avenue.
Right there, where a few days before thousands of picketers from Barrios de Pie, but the non-Kirchnerist version headed by Silvia Saravia, had complained to Social Development - which shares the building with Salud - for the economic and social situation.
Ginés' request to resign, the former minister's immediate compliance, his rare explanation blaming his private secretary for the vaccination operation, Alberto's talk with Carla Vizzotti and her acceptance, monopolized the frenzied Friday afternoon.
This Saturday, more distant from the episode and leaving anger behind, Fernández assured his circle of trust that
"the first thing to clarify is that the event should never have happened."
“There are hundreds of thousands of people waiting for their vaccine and a group of influencers was ahead of them in the queue. That cannot happen any more in Argentina and
less in a pandemic where vaccines are scarce ”
, is the line that the president lowered.
Among those influential there are many close leaders, whose excuse was the trip to Mexico with the president.
In that list of vaccinated are his friend and national deputy
Eduardo Valdés and Jorge Taiana,
both of whom have come down from the entourage.
Also the businessman from Mar del Plata
Florencio Aldrey Iglesias
and the journalist Horacio Verbitsky.
Alberto Fernández does not hesitate in private to assure that
"it was the mistake of the people of Gines and the mistake of Gines in allowing it
.
"
Close to the president they swear that he found out when the fact was already public and that if he had known before that a group of people was going to be vaccinated on the second floor of the Ministry of Health, "he would not have let it happen."
Ginés González García exit from the Ministry of Health.
Photo: Enrique García Medina
The doubt centers on the figure of Verbitsky.
Beyond the idea that he wanted to first investigate an investigation that
Clarín
was carrying out
through two of its journalists –Ignacio Ortelli and Federico Mayol-, the way in which he hit González García with the
vaccine
called powerfully attention.
Automatically, the analysis of a Cristina Kirchner emerged who did not endorse the management of Ginés, but instead maintained an oiled relationship with Carla Vizzotti, and the possibility that Verbitsky had taken advantage of this situation to finish pushing the former Minister of Health out of the Government.
However, Alberto Fernández has made it known that Verbitsky, indeed, as the Clarín investigation was circulating,
wanted to first and “wet the gunpowder”
, but “the shot backfired”.
“I don't think Horacio wanted to do that and I don't even think he could have done it.
Why would Horacio want to kick Ginés out?
If you have so much handling of the board, why did you not foresee the damage that was done to your figure with the rejection of the CELS and that they have fired him from the radio? "
, asks
Clarín
a member of the cabinet, from the small table.
Another minister makes conjectures along the same lines.
It does not stop him that Verbitsky
"puts the body"
risking being a conspirator and causing Ginés González García to be thrown out.
The other option, the official claims, is that
“pride” has played a trick on the former Page 12.
What is completely coincidental, from the President to at least half a dozen of his main officials, is that
Ginés made a very serious mistake
.
From criticism that "his ego did not allow him to measure consequences", until he generated "a horrible situation" and that "he had to go."
But the President directed his main anger at another of those vaccinated VIP in Health.
“
No one notices that a rich man, owner of half of Mar del Plata, managed to get vaccinated himself and his whole family.
A shame ”
, he assured this morning in Olivos, to one of his collaborators.
Florencio Aldrey Iglesias attended to be vaccinated along with
two of his relatives
, and shareholders of his business group: Dolores Noya Aldrey, 63, and Lourdes Noya Aldrey, 65.
Can there be other waivers?
It will depend on the degree of responsibility they had in the VIP vaccination operation.
What Fernández tells his people to be clear is that those who received the vaccines were at risk age and could be inoculated with Sputnik V.
“What is not forgiven is the method used. We are the friends of the owner of the ball, so we play ”
, they say the president roared in the morning of this Saturday in Olivos.
Alberto Fernández knows that
this scandal can brand the government's management of the pandemic by fire.