Fernández warns about prejudice as he goes for a symbolic gesture

President-elect Alberto Fernández on Wednesday received a youth who was stigmatised and mocked online over his outfit while acting as a polling-booth authority in last Sunday’s elections.

Brian Gallo, 22, who has a wife and four-year-old son, works in a co-operative to clean up local streams as well as helping out as a volunteer at a football club for children of low-income familie, AFP reported. On election day Brian was poll captain in the northwestern Buenos Aires suburb of Moreno. However, after photos spread on social networks of him wearing sports clothes and a baseball cap, people began posting comments implying he was a criminal.

“If you vote in Moreno, don’t take anything valuable,” “Vote but leave your mobile behind” and “vVote because I’ll rob you” were some of the more offensive comments posted online accompanying a photo of him

Gallo has subsequently received support. Frente de Todos mayor-elect in Moreno, Mariel Fernández, joined his mother and family in rallying to his defence.

"Thanks God my son was never a thief but always very humble and still is. The uniform does not make the man, that’s why the world is the way it is because of these people,” his mother wrote in Facebook.

The president-elect, with a key eye for symbolic gestures, then took up the case.

“The country now coming will leave behind prejudice and discrimination. We are all Brian,” he tweeted.

Brian came with his mother and son to the San Telmo party headquarters of Alberto Fernández where he was photographed with him wearing his baseball cap with the peak pulled backwards. 

"I feel very proud [for having been received], it’s great when the future president talks to you and tells you he’s going to help you and that he’s on your side,” declared Brian with his child in his arms on coming out of the meeting.

– TIMES/AFP