The President and Victoria Donda. The official left Inadi / Web
The end of the year came with resignations under his arm. In the government of Alberto Fernández, two officials close to Cristina Kirchner left their posts in a context in which the President and his vice president maintain a very distant relationship.
Those who left office were the controller of the Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism (Inadi), Victoria Donda, and the head of the Anti-Corruption Office, Félix Crous. Both maintain a good relationship with the vice president, but in the Casa Rosada they ruled out that it is a new crisis in the ruling coalition.
Of course, they were not the only novelties in the cabinet. The Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, forced the departure of the head of the Casa de la Moneda, Rodolfo Gabrielli.
The least traumatic exit was that of Crous, who had assumed office with the arrival of Alberto Fernández to the Presidency and previously was the head of the Institutional Violence Prosecutor’s Office.
It is one of the main referents of the Legitimate Justice group. His departure is associated with a normative impediment. The jurist is a prosecutor, and from the Public Prosecutor’s Office headed by Eduardo Casal, his license in office was not renewed to continue in the role in the agency. A few months ago, Crous had notified Alberto Fernández that he had to leave at the end of the year as a result of this contingency.
His management had been in the midst of a strong controversy when the Anti-Corruption Office abandoned the role of complainant in the Hotesur and Los Sauces cases. She also returned to benefit Cristina Kirchner by renouncing the allegations in the Highway case for which the current vice president was finally sentenced to six years in prison.
In the case of Donda, it transpired that the President wanted to put an end to the intervention and normalize the institution. At the beginning of December, a conversation had already begun with Donda about his imminent departure. There was a negative opinion about the results of the management in the organism. But the rapid ejection would have been stopped by other members of the ruling party. In an already worn-out political relationship, and after several resistances, the head of Asesores Juan Manuel Olmos then notified Donda that he would be left alone until the end of the year, and he finished finalizing that decision on Thursday when he called her on the phone, at her request. by Alberto Fernandez.
The former Inadi controller anticipated this movement and exposed, in a public letter, her version of events with strong criticism of the Government. She spoke of an “indeclinable” resignation. The novelty surprised, since during the afternoon the agency released a management report that made a balance of 2022 with job prospects for 2023.
Donda returned to stand behind Cristina Kirchner recently, as part of the realignments and internal tension in the Frente de Todos. In a public statement, she questioned the course of the government and attributed her departure to a break with the head of state due to “his political position regarding the current stage.”
Disillusioned, she said that her voice “was not being heard,” and compared the situation to the leadership of the Vice President, who is “a person of flesh and blood who does listen.”
The Government accumulated several consecutive changes in the last month, especially those that occurred before the end of the year. In addition to Donda and Crous, the head of the Mint, Rodolfo Gabrielli, was fired by the Minister of Economy, Sergio Massa, and one of the directors of the Central Bank (BCRA), Betina Stein, an official related to the kirchnerism. In December, the presidential adviser Alejandro Grimson, an intellectual who was close to Alberto Fernández, also resigned.
In the Casa Rosada they are already working on names for replacements in the OA and Inadi. In the event that the intervention in the Institute against Discrimination ends, Congress has to present a shortlist of candidates from which the Executive Branch then has to choose.
In the midst of these movements, the Government came out yesterday to rule out that it was a crisis in the cabinet.
