Watch: Argentina’s outgoing vice president sticks middle finger up at Javier Milei’s supporters
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Argentina’s outgoing vice president stuck her middle finger up at crowds of Javier Milei supporters as she arrived at his swearing-in ceremony, footage shows.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was heckled on Sunday on her way into congress for the ceremonial handing over of power to Mr Milei, who has spent months attacking her Leftist political legacy.
Ms Fernández de Kirchner was captured on camera waving towards the gathered crowds but when she becomes shielded from public view, she gestures towards them with her middle finger.
The incident triggered condemnation in Argentina, where local media characterised the hand signal as a “f--- you” to the electorate.
Writing in La Nación, one of Argentina’s main newspapers, columnist Pablo Sirvén, described it as a “late teen rebel pose” that “shamed the institutions that she represented during two terms as president of the nation, one as vice and various times as a legislator.”
During Sunday’s ceremony Ms Fernández de Kirchner looked visibly uncomfortable as she stood next to a beaming Mr Milei, 53, as the brash Right-wing libertarian economist took the presidential oath.
The incident is not the first time polarising Ms Fernández de Kirchner has courted controversy during her two decades at the forefront of Argentine politics.
During her 2007-2015 presidency, she cozied up to Vladmir Putin, the Russian president, and Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s late strongman leader. She was also accused of falsifying inflation statistics and of handing Iran control of the investigation into the unresolved 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community centre in which 85 people died.
She also, famously, appeared on TV dressed in all white following the shooting death of an anti-corruption prosecutor who had been investigating her.
During the flamboyant ceremony on Sunday, Mr Milei signed the ceremonial presidential register adding the word “carajo” which loosely translates as “damn” after his name.
He also reportedly had his presidential cane inscribed with the faces of his two cloned dogs.
