Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel expresses his support for the former president of Argentina
Stella Calloni
Correspondent
La Jornada Newspaper
Sunday, November 24, 2024, p. 19
Buenos Aires., With severe criticism of the dismantling of the State, especially in the area of health, the unsustainable increase in medicines and the serious situation of public hospitals, among other issues that affect the majority of Argentines, former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, head of the Peronist Justicialista Party, appeared again in public during the National Health Meeting, at the National University of Rosario, Santa Fe.
Received by a large crowd, she defended the public health system during her administration and referred to a special issue such as mental health in the country, by criticizing the government of far-right President Javier Milei, whom she challenged deregulate medicationswhen asking him to order the authority in charge that it be encouraged so that people can access medicines and it is not a torment for a retiree to have to go to a pharmacy and leave half or three quarters of the medicines because they cannot afford it.
In reference to the health system, he recalled the former minister of that sector during Perón’s presidency, Ramón Carrillo, when he mentioned that Health is not a scientific fact, it is a political and social fact, which requires a country projectwhile now Milei’s government deregulates in favor of a few very powerful people.
He also called for imported generic medicines to reduce the costs of health budgets. Argentine laboratories have had extreme profitability in the midst of popular misery because their sales fell and they compensated for the fall with indiscriminate price increases, some reaching 500 percent (others up to a thousand percent)..
She referred to the achievements in the administration of her late husband Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his two terms of government (2007-2015), remembering the creation of a system that improved the quality of life, care and health of all Argentines, with the construction of more than 25 hospitals as of 2015 and 71 that we left in operationin addition to 7,500 primary health care centers.
We worked with results from territorial equityincluding the Argentina smiles program, when with 30 health trucks that arrived in different parts of the country “they brought back the smile to thousands of Argentines or the health train that delivered glasses to thousands of others.”
Another important achievement was the enactment of the law that ensured that prepaid works “that serve the middle and upper middle sectors could not unilaterally set the fees as they do now.”
Political persecution
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentine Nobel Peace Prize winner, warned in a message about political and legal persecution as a threat to democracy and human rights, calling on the people to be alert and mobilized against the authoritarianism of the Milei government, which is leading the country to a serious setback and loss of public rights and freedoms, unleashing the persecution of social organizations and opposition political leaders.
He highlighted that the president imposed the cancellation of the pension (of Cristina Fernández) as former president of the nation, without respecting that it can only be through a political trial by Congress and how this situation of the call lawfare It was repeated in similar cases in countries with popular governments.
He rejected the sentence against the former president to disqualify her from the government and highlighted that The Judiciary must be independent of the governments in power, today it is not credible and is contaminated by the vicissitudes of party politics..
Full note in: https://bit.ly/3V5SK8c
