Esteban Bullrich became the moral beacon of Argentine politics this week. His irrevocable resignation letter to PRO, addressed to Mauricio Macri, exposes the undisguised protection that the party’s legislators provide to Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni. With that decision, Bullrich places the former president’s party before a crisis of conscience: are they for or against Javier and Karina Milei’s favorite minister?
Bullrich’s words should put an end to the alibis, dodges, and antics of those who, for weighty reasons, are determined to protect a corrupt and shameless character who holds one of the highest institutional responsibilities in the republic. Neither Macri nor Milei can accuse Bullrich of being a communist, statist, or confidant of Cristina Kirchner.
In that man, burdened by a relentless illness, the moral indignation that many of his co-religionists have abandoned in the name of cynical realism or, plainly, political benefits and privileges obtained in the warmth of official favor, remains alive. We can recognize nuances, but when it comes to the balance, what prevails is shamelessness and the most athletic opportunism.
In these moral crossroads, justifications and excuses abound. Moral imperatives are declined so as not to play into the hands of Peronism and the «kukas,» which amounts to more or less the same thing. The excuse, however predictable, is morally destitute.
Along the way, the luminaries of this reasoning gift moral values to Peronism, ironically the least suited, the least ethically qualified to claim those values. To put it cinematically: we cannot renounce warning about the danger of Dracula so as not to play into the hands of Frankenstein or the Werewolf.
We could also tell these politicians, who for unconfessable reasons are willing to be complicit in the indefensible, that given Milei’s personality, they will not only earn the contempt of those who trusted them but will also not prevent the libertarian government from insulting them, as it has done before and will continue to do.
I ask: what signs, evidence, or messages are the gentlemen and ladies of PRO, and some UCR leaders, waiting for to realize that Milei indeed despises them and is determined to humiliate them whenever he pleases?
To characters like these, Winston Churchill said they sacrificed honor to avoid war and now have war without honor. And all this moral bankruptcy in the name of Adorni.
In honor of realism, it must be said that the curious resurrection of moral scandals starring Martín Insaurralde and his ex-lover wife recovered, with their most obscene images, that sort of mafia-like underworld that distinguishes Peronism from the Conurbano, one of whose most distinguished exponents is precisely Insaurralde.
Always in homage to memory, it is important to note that the gentleman from Lomas de Zamora, the gambling czar and master of whatever criminal schemes are carried out in that unfortunate territory, was something like the chief of staff of the spotless Axel Kicillof, a political distinction he obtained thanks to the offices and efforts of the Lady who now enjoys vacations with an ankle monitor included at her residence at San José 1111.
To tell the truth, Insaurralde has done nothing different from what the penguin and the successful lawyer accustomed us to. Bags, suitcases, wads of cash.
That Insaurralde is a classic exponent of that style of exercising power by accumulating millions of dollars under the table is not only evident but also important to note that this exquisite gentleman is not alone, that around him flutter the hook-beaked birds who add to their thirst for power and fortune the audacity of declaring themselves holders of the national and popular cause.
A litany, the latter, with a well-known little march as background music that extols the excellent and truthful virtues of the «first worker.»
Rapacious politicians assume that the passion for football will distract public opinion. That the goals of the national team and the massive celebrations of this Argentine passion called football will relegate the daily miseries of politics and the hardships of the economy to the realm of fog and shadows. How to explain to them that they are wrong again.
That the villainies and moral miseries of the Chiqui Tapias and Pablo Tovigginos of the day do not confuse Argentines who find in football a genuine and justified passion.
Although the manipulators of the moment find it hard to admit, the joy that Lionel Messi, Julián Álvarez, Gonzalo Montiel, Leandro Paredes, or Lionel Scaloni, among others, give us are not mirages or fireworks, much less substitutes for the economic and social difficulties that weigh on us.
Although they resist believing it, although the gentlemen of AFA and FIFA display the most detestable versions of greed and cynicism, football—the football that matters to millions of Argentines—is incorruptible.
I found him the other day at the bar. He has lived in Buenos Aires for years but once a month he visits his city surrounded by rivers, as he likes to say. He is a bit older but remains intact. In his eyes, in the movement of his hand, in the tone of his voice, you can see he is intact.
Also in his irony. Politics is his vocation. Politics and the paradoxes of politics. For example, before saying goodbye, he told me:
«Don’t be fooled, Alaniz. If you don’t display an elegant and extensive police record, if you don’t add a strict electronic ankle monitor and at least two judicial proceedings, plus a predictable sexual inclination toward what the common folk call ‘cat,’ I regret to tell you, although the news may discourage you, that you have not the slightest possibility or romantic chance with Jesica Cirio. Any doubt or tribulation, consult, among others, with comrades Martín Insaurralde, Elías Piccirillo, or Nicolás Trombino.»
Fairness compels. In the name of objectivity, it must also be said that corruption splatters and, in more than one case, muddies the opposition, although it is important to note that compared to the Peronist bullies and their entourage of social climbers, ruffians, scoundrels, hustlers, thugs, blackmailers, pickpockets, and backstabbers, the most daring and reckless opposition members are no more than timid and stammering apprentices.
para mi bullrich es el unico honesto el pro se vendio a adorni y a los k son unos traidores macri tiene q hacerse cargo no puede proteger a ese impresentable vamos esteban sos nuestra esperanza volve a la cancha q aca te bancamos
Para mí la renuncia de Bullrich es puro verso, otro teatrito de la derecha. Adorni es el mismo que defiende a los ricos mientras nos cortan el salario. El PRO se desangra y a mí me chupa un huevo, son todos tibios hediondos. Macri y Bullrich, dos caras de la misma moneda podrida. ¡Ni uno ni otro nos van a salvar, la única salida es la lucha popular!