With the exception of the minister herself, no official has been dismissed so far.
14ymedio, Madrid, 8 November 2024 — Talk of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry continues to be on everyone’s lips after the unexpected vote in the UN by Javier Milei’s government in favor of the resolution against the US embargo on Cuba, which led to the sudden dismissal of Minister Diana Mondino. According to the Argentine press, it was not the, now former, Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship who made the decision to maintain the vote in favor of Havana, but her deputy foreign minister, Eduardo Bustamante, and he will remain in office.
According to the iProfesional media, the Directorate of International Organizations issued a memorandum advising a vote against the embargo. Paola Di Chiaro, an official of the Foreign Ministry, asked to take into account that there is an agreement with Cuba in the Decolonization Committee, by virtue of which Havana votes, in exchange, in favor of the return of the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) to Argentina. Mondino, according to this account, hesitated about what the final decision should be and ended up delegating it to Bustamante who, after consulting with other high officials – including Milei’s advisor, Santiago Caputo – ended up telling Mondino: “You have all the support to vote against the embargo.”
The decision, a few hours later, cost the chancellor’s head, but Bustamante saved his own and will continue as second in command to the new chancellor, Gerardo Wherthein. Mondino’s successor, whom Milei charged with identifying the “traitorous” diplomats and the “enemies of the agendas of freedom,” has ordered the opening of an administrative investigation – without specifying which body or person should carry it out, an anomaly in the country – and, although he asked for the resignation of all the officials of the Foreign Ministry, he has only accepted the resignation of three people linked to the economic area and not the one who was involved in the vote on October 30, including those who transmitted the message to Mondino.
“What we want to understand is how a vote in favor of Cuba is taken in a country that has a foreign policy contrary to that”
Milei’s order already has its first judicial consequences. The social-democratic deputy Fernando Carbajal, from the sector of the Radical Civic Union that does not support the current Government, filed a complaint for “ideological persecution” and “illegal intelligence actions” against the Executive. “We are criminally denouncing President Milei and Chancellor Werthein for the Stalinist-libertarian purge in the Foreign Ministry. Ideological persecution violates the Constitution, the Intelligence Law and the Penal Code. We will not remain silent in the face of authoritarianism and McCarthyism,” he explained on X.
The deputy maintains that there is no problem with Mondino’s departure, which is “legal” and “legitimate” because she is part of the Cabinet and has lost the confidence of the president who appointed her, but rather with the fact that it is being used to carry out an “ideological purge.”
The discontent is not limited to the opposition. Former President Mauricio Macri has told the Argentine press that he agrees with Milei’s position regarding the vote as well as requesting the resignation of political officials, but he believes that this cannot lead to a general case against public employees. “The Foreign Ministry is a very disciplined place; the housecleaning that must be done, and which Mondino had already begun, is with the people appointed by Alberto Fernández and Sergio Massa, but it has nothing to do with career people, but with politicians. They must be cleaned up, their privileges reduced, they must pay income tax, but it is not a witch hunt or making them vote against their will,” he said.
Werthein, for his part, says that the investigation will not be ideological. “What we want to understand is how a vote in favor of Cuba is formed in a country that has a foreign policy contrary to that, and that is not implicit. We need to understand why this confusion is generated,” he explained.
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