Some 12 people celebrate the birthday of the first lady of Argentina, Fabiola Yáñez, on July 14, 2020, at the official residence in Olivos.
The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, has solved with money one of the most expensive political scandals in his public image.
In August 2021, a photo revealed that the first lady, Fabiola Yáñez, had violated the quarantine against covid-19 a year earlier to celebrate her birthday at the official residence in Olivos.
A judge accepted this Monday that the 3 million pesos (about 25,000 dollars at the official exchange rate) offered by the president as compensation are enough to close the
Olivosgate
, as it was known in Argentina.
“That was something that should never have happened.
I was the first president to go to court in the face of an error,” Fernández said on Friday, in a radio interview, by way of self-criticism.
The dissemination of the first lady's birthday photo caused enormous damage to the president's popularity at the time.
The party was held on July 14, 2020, three months after Fernández himself had confined Argentines to his houses to stop the spread of covid-19.
At that beginning of the quarantine, the opposition criticized the closures and promoted protest demonstrations, while the president recalled that the decree that bore his signature established prison for those who did not respect the confinement.
Circulation, wakes, trips within and outside the country were prohibited, and non-essential businesses closed their doors.
The restrictions were still in place when Fernández's wife invited her friends to the official residence and celebrated her birthday.
The moment was captured in a photo that was a typical scene of friends.
Around a large table in the hall of the presidential residence, a dozen people without masks smiled at the camera, after a dinner whose remains had not yet been removed.
The spread of the photo fell like a bomb.
In August 2021, when the image reached the media, the campaign for the mid-term legislative elections began, which would deliver a very harsh defeat to the government candidates.
Even today it is considered that that photo, and the evidence of the betrayal at his own orders, began the decline in the president's popularity, which had reached peaks of up to 80% at the start of the pandemic.
Today, Fernández has a negative image of more than 60%, according to different public opinion polls.
Fernández's strategy before the photo was varied.
He first denied his authenticity, then blamed his wife for the party, and then apologized.
He then appeared before the court voluntarily and without a lawyer (Fernández is a criminal lawyer by profession) to propose "reparation of the potential damage that may have been caused" with the donation of about 6,300 dollars to be paid in installments with part of his monthly salary. .
In his defense, the president argued that the party was a "crime of abstract danger" because no contagion had been recorded during the meeting.
"Given the non-existence of a harmful result, I put to the consideration of the SS the criminal insignificance (not social or moral) of the denounced behavior that has not harmed the legal interest (...) and therefore I request that this complaint be dismissed",
The sum offered finally grew to 1.6 million by Fernández and 1.4 million by Fabiola Yánez.
The money will go to the Malbrán Institute, a public entity that works to combat infectious diseases such as covid-19.
With the payment, the
Olivosgate
will be archived.
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