Argentine president strongly condemns attempted attack on vice president

By Bala Chambers

LONDON (AA) - Following the arrest of a Brazilian national for pointing a gun at Vice President and ex-president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner late Thursday, Argentina's president strongly condemned the attack, which has reverberated across the country.

President Alberto Fernandez said "social peace has been disturbed" after a 35-year-old was found to have a gun with five bullets, although none had left the gun, reportedly due to a malfunction, after what the president called an attempt on the life of de Kirchner.

The president said he had contacted a judge to investigate the incident and also announced a national holiday this Friday "so that in peace and harmony the Argentine people can express themselves in defense of life, of democracy and in solidarity with our vice president."

In a televised address Fernandez said Argentina is facing an extremely grave institutional and human situation after "an attack against our vice president and social peace has been altered.”

"It is necessary to banish violence from political and media discourse," said Fernandez in his address from the Presidential Palace in the capital Buenos Aires.

Fernandez went on to describe the incident as "extremely serious, the most serious that has happened since we have recovered democracy" and called on society to condemn it.

"It deserves the most energetic repudiation from all of Argentine society, from all political sectors, and all the men and women of the republic, because these events affect our democracy," he said.

On hate between various of sectors, he said: "We can disagree, we can have deep disagreements, but in a democratic society, speech that promoted hate can he allowed because it engenders violence and there is no possibility of violence coexisting with democracy.”

He added: "We are obliged to recover the democratic coexistence that has been broken by the hate speech that has spread from different political, legal, and media spaces of Argentine society."

Fernandez called for the return of peace in the country, adding, "Argentina cannot lose another minute, there is no time," and calling for all of society " to banish violence and hatred from political and media discourse and from our life in society."

"We need to isolate, not validate and repudiate the disqualifying, stigmatizing and offensive words that only divide and confront us," he said.

In the aftermath of the attack, Fernandez remarked that it “moves all the Argentine people and in particular those of us who are her colleagues who embrace it in solidarity with all our love.”

Fernandez underscored that "the Argentine people want to live in democracy and in peace, and our government has the firm commitment to work every day so that we achieve it."

The suspect in the attack was identified by the Federal Police as Fernando Andres Zabak, a 35-year-old man of Brazilian nationality, who according to a local news agency last March was arrested inside a car without a license plate with a "35-centimeter-long blade."