Hastily signed on the same morning as its Senate passage, the media law is a done deal as far as the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration is concerned but various procedural aspects of the passage are already returning to haunt the government even more than the bill’s controversial contents. These procedural irregularities range from such gross flaws as the open admission by Corrientes Radical Senator Dora Sánchez of the pressures on her vote via the fragility of her province’s finances to the legerdemain of defining corrections in the bill as errata rather than the changes which would have sent the bill back to the Lower House (these alterations to correct a couple of erroneous cross-references still leave in place such mistakes as the faulty Spanish which asserts that broadcasting licences are to be reviewed twice a year instead of every two years). In addition, the government is making it clear that if necessary, the licensing committee will go ahead without the opposition, which has the right to name two of the seven members and which has indicated its preference to select these representatives from the new parliamentarians taking their seats as from December 10.

Over and above the specific merits of the media law, such short cuts need to be seriously debated because they represent a genuine dilemma. In every country the devil lies in the detail but in Argentina this aspect seems to reach the dimensions of a “preventive machine” which impedes both good and bad laws from ever seeing the light of day (apart from making for a dysfunctional legal system which contributes towards keeping the crime rate high). If the law is an ass (in the words of Mr. Bumble), then governments can feel almost justified in sidestepping its requirements but making a habit out of contempt for the law has disastrous consequences both at home and abroad — not only does the country’s overseas image suffer while institutional foundations are undermined but governments become almost obliged to perpetuate themselves via fresh legal and institutional irregularities in order not to face the consequences of the original sins.

The next government move after the successful passage of the media bill is reportedly a political reform whose alleged aim is to load the dice heavily in favour of the Kirchners for the 2011 presidential elections but a more statesmanlike vision might address the legislative process itself in order to save laws from being neutralized by their own technicalities.