Argentine President Cristina Fernandez is under fire for a tweet mocking Chinese accents as she met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While on a state visit to China seeking badly needed investment, Ms. Fernandez tried to mimic a Chinese accent in a tweet by switching “r’s” with “l’s.” She tweeted to her 3.52 million followers a message in Spanish that translated as: “Did they only come for lice and petloleum,” The Associated Press reported.
A few minutes later, she added: “Sorry, the levels of ridiculousness and absurdity are so high they can only be digested with humor,” AP reported.
Twitter and the Chinese Twitter-like platform Sina Weibo reportedly exploded with criticism of the Argentine president, calling her rude, disrespectful and even racist. As of Thursday morning, there was no official response from China about Ms. Fernandez’s comments.
“Every day she’s digging herself a bigger hole and showing the world she’s finishing her term with an inverse learning curve,” said Sergio Berensztein, a Buenos Aires-based political analyst, Bloomberg reported. “You expect new presidents to make errors at the beginning and to finish well but she’s the opposite.”
The latest controversy comes as Ms. Fernandez struggles to distance herself from the still-unexplained death of a prosecutor, whose body was found hours before he was to present evidence backing up claims that the president helped shield Iranians connected to the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center, AP reported.
Ms. Fernandez has vehemently denied the accusations, providing her own conspiracies that perhaps the prosecutor killed himself or was murdered by rogue elements in the intelligence services, AP reported.
During her four-day state visit in China, Ms. Fernandez signed 15 agreements with Mr. Xi on issues ranging from nuclear energy to agriculture, Bloomberg reported.
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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