Today, Argentina’s former two-term President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who also served as vice president for one term, was officially placed under arrest for a phony corruption charge, but Judge Jorge Gorini of the Federal Oral Tribunal 2 appeals court that upheld her 2022 conviction, decided, under pressure from President Javier Milei, to allow her to serve her six-year sentence under house arrest. Fernández had been ordered to appear at the central Comodoro Py court complex in Buenos Aires on June 18 to be arraigned and learn whether she would serve her sentence at a prison or under house arrest. As a former head of state, Fernández is entitled to a security detail, made more necessary by the Sept. 1, 2022 assassination attempt against her, but had she been ordered to go to a prison, she would have been stripped of her security and kept in total isolation.
Milei’s motivation in pushing for the house arrest option had nothing to do with any concern for Fernández de Kirchner, but rather for his own eroding reputation. The blatant political persecution of a very popular former President and national leader of the large Peronist opposition movement, and the expressions of solidarity and support she’s received from political leaders in Ibero-America and beyond, have placed Kirchner at the center of media attention nationally and internationally. This has driven the unhinged Milei to distraction. Worse was the planned gigantic march of her supporters, numbering in the tens of thousands (or more) that was to have accompanied her to her court appearance tomorrow under the banner “Argentina with Cristina.”
