Marcelo Hugo Helfgot
02/20/2021 8:46 AM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/20/2021 8:59 AM
After the wave of rejection by the opposition and by different social sectors of the existence of special vaccinations for
Kirchner leaders and friends of the Government
, the bloc of senators from Together for Change got to the point: this Friday at the last minute it presented a draft resolution for the body led by
Cristina Kirchner to
summon the Chief of Staff,
Santiago Cafiero,
to an interpellation for the scandal.
"In accordance with the power conferred by Article 71 of the National Constitution, the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers, Lic. Santiago Cafiero, is summoned to appear before the Plenary of this Honorable Body, in order to provide the explanations that are urgent and necessary on the existence of a "vip vaccination" in the Ministry of Health and the criteria adopted by the National Executive Power to distribute the few vaccines acquired against Covid 19 ", maintains the text prepared by the head of the interblock, the radical
Luis Naidenoff
, and his PRO peer,
Humberto Schiavoni.
In the text, they also demand that the official explain "the control and monitoring processes adopted,
attentive to the scandalous cases that have become public, of vaccinating politicians and those close to the Government in a privileged way
with respect to the rest of the vulnerable population." .
The initial intention of the opposition legislators was to demand the presence of
Ginés González García
to explain why official leaders and close associates were privileged in the vaccination program that operated in the Ministry of Health and in other parts of the country, but his resignation as a result of the This fact made the formal claim turn towards Cafiero,
as head of the national administration
.
The project bears the signature of all the members of the opposition interblock, including Roberto Basualdo, Pablo Blanco, Néstor Braillard Poccard, Esteban Bulllrich, Oscar Castillo, Julio Cobos, Eduardo Costa, Alfredo De Angeli, Silvia Elias de Perez, Mario Fiad, Silvia Giacoppo, Gladys González, Martín Lousteau, Juan Carlos Marino, Ernesto Martínez, Julio Martinez, Stella Maris Olalla, Claudio Poggi, Laura Rodríguez Machado, María Belén Tapia, Guadalupe Tagliaferri, Clara Vega, Pamela Verasay and Víctor Zimmerman.
Because they are a minority, the senators of Together for Change would
need the votes of the Frente de Todos
to be able to advance in the precinct with their request, if the vice president takes the project to committee first and the debate is favorable to its treatment.
One of the
"privileged"
who received the Sputnik V vaccine outside the protocol
was Jorge Taiana, who entered the Senate as Cristina's substitute in 2019.
After an investigation by Clarín revealed the episode, the former foreign minister took him down from the trip that he was going to undertake Mexico as part of the presidential entourage
.
Another opposition force, the GEN of
Margarita Stolbizer,
preferred to express its condemnation of VIP Vaccinations by sending a letter to President
Alberto Fernández.
In the text, which the former deputy signs as president of the group, together with the general secretary
, Sergio Abrevaya, it
is stated:
"Alarmed by the serious events that have taken public dissemination around the mismanagement of health regarding the treatment of the Covid 19 pandemic and the vaccination plans, we are writing to you in order to
request the immediate responses
that the group of Citizens have the right to receive, on the different responsibilities and the solutions that will be taken on the matter.
"The existence of a special vaccination mechanism for some privileged people due to their close relationship with the Government, crowns a series of episodes that
weakened the credibility of the Government
on an issue as sensitive for the entire population as access to the vaccine for prevent contagions.
"The precedent was
unfounded announcements about the millionaire purchase of doses that never arrived, the
lack of transparency in the acquisition and distribution, and the political use of
militant groups from La Cámpora
with propaganda clothing to register volunteers, and now the existence of a privileged access for certain people who received the vaccine clandestinely within the same Ministry of Health of the Nation.
"We reject any type of priority access that postpones essential workers and people at risk."
On the
other hand, the
fundamentals
of the draft resolution Together for Change to interpellate Cafiero in the precincts of the Senate, sent to Cristina as president of the body, are as follows:
"Madam President: As of today, the fact that government politicians and Mr.
Horacio Verbitsky
have accessed the Covid 19 vaccine in a privileged way,
through various media outlets
or indication of the Minister of the area
Ginés González García
, in a sort of
"VIP vaccination"
set up in the facilities of the Ministry of Health of the Nation.
"In the same sense, similar events, of aberrant privileges in the midst of the pandemic, transcended, such as that of the Mayor of the town of Comandante Luis Piedra Buena, of the Province of Santa Cruz,
Federico Bodlovic
(from the Frente de Todos) , his wife,
Bernardita Manucci,
Justice of the Peace from the same town, and official political associates, without first having vaccinated all the personnel of the "Armando Zamudio" District Hospital.
"In this sad context, in which more than 51,000 compatriots have already died who were not lucky enough to get the vaccine before contracting the virus, when the country has only managed to get something like 400,000 vaccines - having promised the Minister of Health for this date have 20 million inhabitants vaccinated-, the obscene parade of official leaders and those close to the Executive Power is outrageous, showing off illegitimate privileges and abusing their power, access the vaccine before the rest of the the population that has been defined as a priority.
"Given this inadmissible scenario in health matters, and the general commotion that these events are causing in the population, it is essential that the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers immediately attend the plenary session of this Honorable Chamber to give an account of the aforementioned events , and the disaster of the sanitary policy that is evidenced in the methodology adopted to obtain and administer the vaccine.
"Some of the issues on which it is urgent to question the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers has to do with the need to know about the existence and nature of the VIP vaccination set up in the facilities of the Ministry of Health itself and who the politicians have been , especially Ministers and Legislators who have been vaccinated there.
"It is also necessary to know what is the role, formal or informal, that has been assigned to the ruling party and especially the
group La Cámpora
in the distribution of the vaccine.
"Given the seriousness of the known facts, it is necessary to know the details of the people who have been given the vaccine and what objective criteria they met to have benefited from it with respect to the rest of the population.
"Likewise, we need to question Mr. Cafiero about the existence or not of a plan to control and monitor the vaccines that the Executive Branch distributes and applies in a centralized manner.
"It is necessary for the Minister to explain what is the distribution criterion among Provinces, how many doses each has received and on what date.
"Madam President, the seriousness of the events that have become public exempt us from further foundations. We Argentines, who have seen 51 thousand compatriots die, who
in many cases have been very close relatives
, cannot allow these miserable behaviors pseudo-leaders walk through society with impunity in the midst of the pandemic that does not end precisely because of the lack of vaccines in the country.
"In this serious context, it is imperative that the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers appear urgently in the plenary session of the Chamber and give all the explanations that the aberrant case requires.
"For the reasons stated, we ask our peers to support this initiative."