Mauricio Macri said that despite the fame he gained at the World Cup in Qatar, he will attend tomorrow’s game. Of course, the photo will circulate only in the event that he wins the Argentine team. But it doesn’t matter what I do in Qatar anymore. Macri used soccer to grow in politics and now, in a pirouette of poetic justice, soccer inflicted the most serious damage on him: “Macri Mufa” crossed the borders of Peronism and Kirchnerism and spread throughout the soccer world.
Politics has to do with country projects. The right always tends to avoid this discussion because it is very clear that their project is based on the defense of the privileges of a caste of economic power to the detriment of the workers and the poorest. To intervene in politics, he has sought shortcuts that take the spotlight off inequalities and injustices.
One of them has been soccer, which is more emotion than reason, a different matter from politics, although, of course, it has crosses with it, like almost all human activities. Macri financed his campaign in Boca and was his president. When he entered the world of politics, he was already well known, something that in this world has a lot of value, even more than the good ideas of a stranger.
This conception led him to prepare the interview with Joaquín Morales Solá on his cable channel, The Nation+. And the final question about soccer was settled. There Macri talked about football as if he were intelligent and contributed something. He talked about the teams that had won their ticket to Qatar and he was wrong about all of them. The gentlemen, who come to be all soccer fans, quickly captured the string of commonplaces and crucified him, in a lethal action.
Macri Mufa, the hashtag of Qatar
Macri Mufa became a hashtag after each game, where those he had praised sank. Macri was photographed with Roberto Carlos, Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Cafú, when Brazil beat Korea, but the photo spread when Croatia knocked them out of the World Cup. The memes exploded on the networks and there was no way to cover it up.
There was a campaign by the media corporation to lower the price of the performance of the team that, despite all the predictions of its reporters, reached the final. They were concerned that the triumphs of the national team could dispel society’s bad mood about inflation. The most transparent ideological expression was that of the Horacio Rodríguez Larreta government, which filled the center of the city with billboards and police. And the Buenos Aires police repressed and made arrests.
There were many families with their children, generally humble people who do not have money to travel to Qatar, and the festivities were peaceful. The neoliberal right feels popular joy as a threat. Instead of joining and collaborating with the festivities, he filled the place with billboards and policemen in an aggressive attitude. She showed the fray and it was so evident that she already circulated that tomorrow they will put the fences in a different way.
Another minor action by Macri, but one that represents the ideology of neoliberalism, was financing a group of students from the country to travel to Qatar. The logical thing to do would have been to grant scholarships to boys who attend public schools in poor neighborhoods. But Macri, as president of the FIFA Foundation, could not cope with his genius and awarded scholarships to students from one of the most elite private schools in San Isidro.
The condemnation of Milagro Sala
That strong look at society is confirmed as an echo in most of the Judiciary. The Court confirmed Milagro Sala’s thirteen-year prison sentence for “heading an illegal association” formed only to defraud the State. It turns out that the construction of around eight thousand low-income houses, more model schools, secondary schools with a gymnasium and swimming pool, health rooms, hospitals, brick factories, and recreation centers for poor neighborhoods is defrauding the State.
For each house, the State paid half of what the private construction companies offered. I could do it because it was community work. They accused her that, of the eight thousand, some 500 had remained unbuilt. The defense proved otherwise, presented documents that proved it, but the court did not take them into account. The defense appealed and reached the Court, which has just confirmed that sentence.
They do not condemn her for the houses that are supposedly missing, but for the ones she built. The same radicals admit that they had to take it out of circulation “because with Milagro on the street, it would have been impossible to govern.” And with that they justify the subjugation of the Supreme Court of Jujuy and the designation by hand of the courts that were to judge it. They were mounted on the annoyance of a middle class for the street closures in the poorest province of the country.
The sentence and the situation are modeled on those of Cristina Kirchner. Both are women, both are combative popular leaders who can mark the field for neoliberal governments. The condemnations of Milagro Sala and Cristina Kirchner have the same reactionary and patriarchal charge. But they are also fundamentally undemocratic, because in both cases they seek to discipline politics and popular demand. And in both cases the citizen’s right to due process was ignored.
addicted justice
In an interview also on the channel that is claimed to belong to Macri, the head of the Court, Horacio Rosatti, justified that 84 percent of Argentines have a negative image of the Judiciary. He lied, said that in all countries, he has that image and that the same thing happens from Néstor Kirchner onwards.
That mention showed the resentment of the magistrate who was resigned as Minister of Justice by the former president. Kirchner gave a republican demonstration by appointing a Court that was not addicted to him. The radicals demonstrated in Jujuy and the PRO with the National Court have done the opposite. The Courts and the addicted judges have been a historical political practice, which also included Menemist Peronism.
Shortly before confirming that infamous conviction of Milagro Sala, Rosatti had rejected the request for a hearing presented by the legislators of the Frente de Todos. The excuse was that the Court is studying the appeal made by Senator Luis Juez and therefore cannot meet with legislators who are involved in this issue.
It was a cynical response. He blamed the same legislators who asked him for an audience for not giving it to him. But the legislators did not want to talk about the judge, but about the scandal that Justice is going through with the four judges honored in a millionaire way by Clarín, whom they have favored in numerous sentences. The Judge thing was an excuse for Rosatti not to face the scandal that was generated by these indefensible judges: Julián Ercolini, Carlos Mahiques, Pablo Cayssials and Pablo Yadarola.
The Federal Board of Courts and Tribunals issued a critical statement for the alleged millionaire gift. At the UBA, thousands of signatures were gathered to demand the academic trial of Ercolini. But in the Legislature, Together for Change and the leftist legislators prevented the session where they were going to request impeachment of the CABA officials who participated in that meeting.
The Court functioned like Together for Change: it paralyzed the Council of the Magistracy and does not hold a hearing to avoid dealing with the scandal of these magistrates.
