With the presidential primaries just around the corner, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner led a rally in the province of Buenos Aires joined by governor and presidential hopeful Daniel Scioli, also sending some messages to BA City Mayor Mauricio Macri who was forced to acknowledge some key government policies following the tighter-than-expected results in the City’s elections on Sunday.
Today’s rally took place in the Buenos Aires province locality of Cañuelas where Ms. Kirchner officially inaugurated a new section of the provincial Route 6, a work that has been financed by the federal government.
“When some complaint because the bonaerenses go to work to the City (of Buenos Aires), we give work there and here because we are Argentineans and we give work everywhere,” Cristina Ferández said in the beginning of her speech aiming at Macri’s comments on BA province residents – so called “bonaerenses” -, coming to Argentina’s capital to get medical and education services.
The head of state praised the inauguration of a new sector of the Route 6 in the province which demanded an “investment of 2.5 billion pesos, which was also an investment of the province, it was engineering between the province and the nation.”
"Thanks for nothing"
“We have built a new Argentina, the challenge is that we need more, we need and we must continue in this path,” Ms. Kirchner affirmed adding she felt “very happy” that “some” have now come to “realize how good” has been to nationalize Argentina’s flag carrier and YPF or to recover the funds of the ANSES social security office which were administrated by private companies.
“The one thing I always think about is that what if they realized sooner, how many time (…) we could have earned, rivers of ink, voices saying we were dividing the country. We were convincing (people) that it was good to have planes of our own,” the president stated is a new message to PRO party’s presidential hopeful Mauricio Macri.
On Sunday, Macri’s candidate in the City Horacio Rodríguez Larreta got a slight lead against Martín Lousteau of the ECO coalition – only three points – to claim victory in the mayoral elections. After the results, Macri addressed supporters saying he agreed with the government’s choices to, for instance, recover the control of Aerolíneas Argentinas, a bill which, however, his party did not support in Congress.
“Thanks for nothing. But it makes me happy that more Argentineans have realized that we are doing things right,” Cristina Fernández said and moved on to hail the announcement made by Daniel Scioli that he was planning to create the Ministry of Human Rights at a national level if he gets elected president.
“He has announced that he will create the Ministry of Human Rights at a national level. I want to thank him in the name of all human rights organizations (…) and also in the name of who was and will always be my eternal partner, President Kirchner who put the issue in the agenda of the Argentine society when the issue of human rights did not appear in the polls and was not a matter of marketing,” she said recalling her late husband and former president Néstor Kirchner who passed away in 2010.
More Argentina
“It gives me calm and certainty. That ministry of human rights will serve to guard the rights we have conquered over these past years: the gay marriage, the genre identity law, the rights in the new civil and trade code,” Fernández said.
“To all men and women in my country, we have a lot of strength and conviction that this that started 12 years ago, getting unexpected recognitions, must not stop, it must be strengthened; there is never a task that is over. As long as there is an Argentinean who has no job, a kid that can not go to college, there is the obligation to continue working,” she affirmed.
“We have to continue with more human rights, with more schools, more students lodging, more trains, more security, more Argentina for all, to build an Argentina where all 40 million Argentineans have place and live”.
The head of state also held two videoconferences with authorities in the cities of Rosario (Santa Fe province) and Neuquén (Neuquén province).
In Rosario, it was the turn of Interior and Transport Minister Florencio Randazzo to inaugurate a new train station there, connecting the city with the Buenos Aires City station of Retiro.
In Neuquén, she marked the start of train services connecting the provincial capital with the city of Cipolletti.