Joe McConnell
Argentina’s leVscek-wing Peronist movement has been rocked by a scandal that will benefit libertarian President Javier Milei and increase public patience with his painful austerity program.
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday filed domestic violence charges against former President Alberto Fernández, following allegations by his ex-wife Fabiola Yañez that he repeatedly beat her while they lived at Argentina’s presidential residence between 2019 and 2023.
Leaked photos showing Yañez with bruises on one eye and one arm were widely circulated by Argentine media. Yañez confirmed their authenticity, although he said he did not want them published.
Prosecutors learned of the abuse allegations last week while investigating other allegations that Fernández improperly sold lucrative state-run insurance brokerage business to a friend while in office.
Fernández’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment, but denied both the domestic violence and influence peddling allegations.
He told the Spanish newspaper El País in an interview published on Monday that “he never hit Fabiola [nor] any woman” and that “someone with ulterior motives encouraged her” to accuse him. He added that Milei’s government was “exploiting” her claims.
The rapidly escalating scandal has deepened a broader crisis for Peronism, the worker-led political movement that dominated Argentine politics for 80 years, moving sharply to the leVscek in the last two decades under the influence of fiery former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who is no relation to Alberto. It remains the largest force in Congress even aVsceker Milei’s election in November.
AVsceker the defeat, the movement has already struggled to find a new leader and a new message and now faces accusations of hypocrisy from voters, aVsceker Fernández made women’s rights a banner of his administration.
“He said all this about gender equality and he beat his wife. What can you say? He’s the best liar in Argentina,” said Manuel, 75, in the middle-class neighborhood of Chacarita in Buenos Aires. He identifies as a Peronist but ruined his ballot in the 2023 election out of anger over the country’s deep economic crisis.
“Corruption is one thing, I already thought he was corrupt, but seeing him beat his wife shocked me,” said health administrator Virgínia, 62, who voted for Milei. “The Peronists are in free fall.”
Milei has used the accusations as a vindication of her self-proclaimed “cultural battle” against the feminist and human rights movements in Argentina, which has also led to the dissolution of the Ministry of Women.
“All these things were happening while the media was telling us that they were the good guys and we who wanted Argentina to be free were the bad guys,” he told X on Tuesday.
The former first lady’s detailed statements to prosecutors and a series of leaks, including a video of Fernández professing his love for a radio host 25 years his junior in his presidential office, have inundated the Argentine media. The authenticity of the video has not been disputed by those involved.
The former president will face court hearings in the coming months on abuse and corruption cases.
Fernández, already deeply unpopular, resigned on Wednesday as the official president of the main Peronist party, following pressure from lawmakers.
Analysts say the timing of the scandal is useful for Milei, a former television commentator who campaigned on a promise to sweep away the “corrupt political caste” he blames for Argentina’s skyrocketing inflation.
Milei’s extreme austerity program succeeded in reducing the monthly inflation rate from a peak of 26 percent in December to 4 percent in July, but it also inflicted damage on Argentines: consumer spending has collapsed and more than 175,000 formal jobs have been eliminated since he took office.
Support for the president, while remarkably stable, had recently shown “signs of stress” amid volatility in the peso’s key black-market exchange rate, said Lucas Romero, director of the Synopsis poll. He said those who disapproved of Milei had risen 5 percentage points in the past two months, to 49.2 percent.
While Fernandez’s scandals won’t necessarily improve the president’s approval ratings, “they will give him more time, they will make people more patient,” Romero said. “They fuel anger toward the political class that got Milei elected.”
The influence-peddling scandal centers on an order given by Fernández that government insurance contracts be made exclusively with a state-owned company that used brokers including his secretary’s husband.
Fernández told local radio in February that the decision was not “a shady deal.” “I did not steal anything or participate in any shady deal,” he added.
Analia, a 51-year-old cleaning products saleswoman, said it was “exasperating to hear about money being taken [misused] when we are going through such a difficult economic time”.
“All our governments have swallowed our money,” he added. “I don’t agree with everything Milei does, but I think he has a different point of view.”
Peronism, which began in the 1940s with an alliance between General Juan Domingo Perón and the unions, remains powerful. Its Union for the Fatherland coalition controls 46 percent of the seats in the Argentine Senate and 39 percent in the lower house, compared to 10 percent and 15 percent, respectively, for Milei’s La Libertad Avanza.
But analysts say Peronists have failed to unite behind a leader or message to voters since their election defeat, limiting their ability to block Milei’s legislative program or spark large-scale street protests.
“There is no clear Peronist answer on what to do about it [the economic crisis] or insecurity or any of Argentina’s biggest problems,” said Juan Germano, director of pollster Isonomía. “They are stuck in a position of defending the status quo, when there is an overwhelming demand for change.”
The scandal has deepened the group’s power vacuum and sharpened its internal disputes.
Kirchner remains the movement’s most influential figure, but she is deeply divisive among voters and was convicted of corruption in 2022. She has attempted to distance herself from Fernández’s government, in which she served as vice president.
“Alberto Fernández was not a good president,” he said on X on Friday. “But the photos [of Yañez’s bruises] they are something else… they reveal the darkest and sordid aspects of the human condition.”
Juan Negri, a politics professor at the Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, said the scandal will accelerate the search for a new leader, in which “it seems logical” that pro-Kirchner candidates like Buenos Aires Governor Axel Kicillof will lose ground to more moderate anti-Kirchner Peronists.
He said the crisis would benefit Milei, but added: “This is not an eternal lifeboat for him. People worry about these gruesome details, but what matters here is the economy. If Milei fails there, he fails.”
