You know all the smart lines about paranoia. Trust no one. Only paranoids will survive. And so on.

Take a look at the history books and you may soon come to the conclusion that democratically-elected Argentine presidents have reason to trust no one.

The infamous crisis of 2001, with massive sovereign debt default included, crushed the administration of Fernando de la Rúa, a Radical, two years into his four-year mandate. You can look further back if needed be. Raúl Alfonsín, a Radical, quit under the pressure of hyperinflation in 1989. The military kicked out Isabel Perón in 1976 soon after her economy minister announced massive tariff hikes.

Elisa Carrió, the leader of the centrist Civic Coalition, has likened the current situation to 1975. The feeling that another massive political crisis is looming is in the air. Yet, until Monday, no major political leader had addressed the issue directly.

After all 1975 had the tariff hikes, 1989 came with hyperinflation and 2001 was all about default. But there have been no sudden tariff hikes, no hyperinflation and no default in 2009.

Yet clearly, after the ruling party was defeated in the midterm elections in all the big districts, rivals are trying to rock Fernández de Kirchner's boat. It's only natural, judging by history. Trying to rock the boat of frail governments is part of the political culture here.

The government's boat can be rocked, yes. But is there a reason to fear this administration will sink ahead of time? Fernández de Kirchner's boat, after all, has in it the union heavyweight General Labour Confederation (CGT) and a coffer full of the pension money nationalized last year.

The ruling party will lose control of Congress when the newly-elected lawmakers take their seats in December. But can a government go down without a severe economic crisis?

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner on Monday implied that there is a conspiracy to get rid of her before the end of her mandate in 2011.

Argentina, even without an economic crisis, is packed with chronic problems, including poverty and inflation.

Another big problem for the President is that her popularity rating currently stands at about 30 percent. The question now is if Fernández de Kirchner, and her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner, can afford to see their popularity plunge further without seriously having to think it's time to pack their bags.

One recent poll shows that the Kirchners' popularity now stands at just over 20 percent. The ruling Victory Front garnered 30 percent of the vote nationwide in June. But what if your popularity drops to 20 percent? Then there could really be a crisis even without the tariff hikes of 75, the hyperinflation of 89 or the default of 01.

This is not an opinionated place. But kicking out a democratically-elected President is a bad thing. Period. Kicking out De la Rúa, even if he was deemed useless and had no money to down those hefty foreign debt payments, was a bad thing. Period. But that doesn't mean that a democratically-elected President could not be facing a terminal crisis.
Fernández de Kirchner implied on Monday that she fears a conspiracy. Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández, appearing before the Lower House on Wednesday, said: those who think that the administration will leave ahead of time "should get it out of their heads." A Kirchnerite lawmaker has meanwhile accused the Rural Society, former caretaker president Eduardo Duhalde and the media group Clarín of trying to force a crisis. They all deny the allegation.

Only Raúl Castells, a leftist leader of a small group of unemployed people, has said as much: the Kirchners can't be put up with no more and snap presidential elections must be called.

No major politician has said as much. But the word is out. The current struggle - with the nation gripped in a state of agitation - is about whether the weakened and unpopular Fernández de Kirchner will serve out her mandate, as ruled by the Constitution, until 2011.

There should be no question about this. But the question is out there.

Polls now look terrible for the Kirchners. The nerves of the urban middle class are frayed. In the words of one political analysts quoted by an international news agency, the Kirchners' "relationship with society is broken." Broken to the point that local television stars like Marcelo Tinelli, Susana Giménez and Mirtha Legrand are now openly getting political and calling for tougher crime laws to fight crime and to crack down on militant activists that often block roads to voice their demands.

Giménez called for "repression" to put an "end to chaos." Legrand said she planned to organize a rally to complain about the lack of security. Tinelli, the nation's
most-popular television show host since the 90s, is highlighting poverty on his prime time television show.

Nerves were further frayed on Tuesday when the subway workers in Buenos Aires went on strike all day, leaving about one million commuters stranded. The subway workers, headed by democratically-elected leftwing representatives, are demanding legal status for a union they want to establish away from the UTA transport workers union.

The subway workers had staged a similar strike on November 5 (from 11am until the end of the working day). The new strike was called when one of the militant shop stewards, Néstor Segovia, alleged that police and UTA activists raided a soup kitchen managed by his former wife in Greater Buenos Aires. The Labour Ministry has said that it needs more time to deal with the legal issue and has accused the subway workers of staging "savage" strikes.

The government on Tuesday prodded the company, Metrovías, to run an emergency service. But the company said it was impossible because the strikers were at times blocking stations and walking on the railway lines.

The strike was backed by the CTA, the nation's second largest union umbrella group that has also been denied legal status. The Labour Ministry is scheduled to meet with the subway workers tomorrow.

The subway strike is an especially thorny issue for the Peronist administration because UTA is a heavyweight union loyal to truck driver Hugo Moyano, the secretary-general of the General Labour Confederation (CGT). Critics, including renegade shop stewards, accuse the CGT of having the monopoly of union representation.

The CTA has complained loudly about being denied legal status by the Kirchners because Moyano is a key strategic ally (and the CGT still behaves as the trade union wing of the Peronist party).

The agitation did not end with Tuesday's wildcat subway strike. Militant anti-government pickets had vowed to block roads on Wednesday and Thursday to demand a share of work in a 1.5 billion-peso cooperative plan recently announced by the President. The militant pickets allege that the co-operatives will be managed by Peronist mayors and pro-government pickets. One leftwing picket group, the CCC class struggle movement, said it was ready to go on the warpath.

Yet on Tuesday the anti-government pickets acknowledged that they were willing to negotiate with the Social Welfare Ministry. Demonstrations were staged on Wednesday. But the CCC did not deliver on its vow to occupy the premises of the Social Welfare Ministry on 9 de Julio avenue, purportedly after being promised they will get a share of the cooperative work.

Still, the sight of the streets of Buenos Aires swarming with leftist anti-government activists irked Moyano and the pro-government picket leader Luis D'Elía.

The CGT on Tuesday (the day the subway strike was embarrassing UTA) called a pro-government demonstration in Plaza de Mayo for November 20. The demonstration was eagerly endorsed by D'Elía. Yet leftwing parties immediately announced plans to stage a "counter-march" after November 20.

Speculation was rife that the President, in a bid to regain the political initiative, would be the main speaker at the CGT rally this week.

Moyano's truck drivers have also been up to some agitating of their own. The truck drivers, headed by Moyano's son Pablo, had blocked the distribution plants of newspapers Clarín and La Nación claiming that workers delivering the dailies should belong to their union. Moyano said the boycott at distribution plants was strictly part of a trade union conflict. But critics, including the newspapers, said that the boycott was in reality part of a plan by Kirchner and Moyano to gag the press and, in this case, to control the distribution of newspapers.

Congress, prodded by the Kirchners, recently approved a Media Law that will drastically reform the broadcasting business and force Grupo Clarín and others to downsize its cable and open-air television operations.

The Inter American Press Association (IAPA), which gathered in Buenos Aires, issued a statement on Tuesday calling on the new Congress to reform the Media Law next year. Vice-President Julio Cobos, a dissident Radical who is now in the opposition, said that the Media Law was "a step forward, but must be "perfected." Cobos, who attended the IAPA conference, on Thursday said he saw "no conspiracy."

But the President isn't so sure. Moyano and D'Elía met at CGT headquarters on Thursday to organize the November 20 rally. D'Elía was critical of the CGT in the 90s when the trade union heavyweights sided with Carlos Menem, a Peronist who embraced neoconservative policies.

Polls show that Moyano and D'Elía are not popular with independent voters. But they control powerful machines and have territorial clout. Kirchner had reportedly urged them both to call the rally in defence of the government. But in a surprising decision, only minutes after Moyano and D'Elía shook hands on Thursday, Fernández de Kirchner publicly urged the CGT to call off the demonstration and to "stage it some other time." The President was speaking at a meeting of the railway workers union with a stern-faced Moyano by her side.

Fernández de Kirchner said she decided the demonstration was not a good idea when she saw the banner headline on the frontpage of Thursday's Clarín that quoted the veteran deputy leader of the CGT, metal worker Juan Belén, saying that the demonstration was also a message to "all powers" that a reform of the trade union system to cater for the demands of the subway workers and the CTA was not acceptable.

Fernández de Kirchner called the story "the cynicism of the lie."

Belén on Thursday said the CTA was controlled by the "loony left." But Moyano and CTA head Hugo Yasky are on better terms and have since tried to mend fences. Yasky remarked that Belén's comments should be "placed in a museum" and also declared that "the arrow of union reform is in the air and there is no stopping it." There is thus a chance that Congress, if the opposition stands united, could table a bill to reform the trade union system with the backing of the CTA next year.

Fernández de Kirchner's decision to cancel the rally prompted speculation that she had contradicted a daring call made by the government's chief political advisor: her husband.
Another take on the situation was that both the President and her husband felt they had been cornered by Moyano and D'Elía, thus at their mercy, and decided that a bear hug by the two was not such a great idea.

The Peronist party (also known by its acronym in Spanish: PJ) on Tuesday formally turned down Kirchner's resignation as party leader. Kirchner had quit in public the day after he lost the midterm elections in Buenos Aires province on June 28.

Kirchner is thus expected to lead the Peronist party once again as of this week.

The PJ bigwigs loyal to Kirchner on Tuesday also announced support for a political reform bill that, if approved by Congress, will force all parties to stage open presidential
primaries on the same day.

The party's decision came only days after Duhalde, now the Kirchners' arch rival, declared that he planned to challenge Kirchner for the Peronist leadership and possibly even for the presidential nomination.

Yet is Duhalde bluffing? Polls say that he is also unpopular. Polls also show that Senator Carlos Reutemann, a dissident who sided with the farmers during last year's row over soy export duties, is the most popular Peronist. Reutemann has kept a low profile but yesterday he quit the Peronist National Council only days after it accepted Kirchner back as leader. Reutemann still has time to make a serious bid to clinch the presidential nomination.

Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the leader of the centre-right party PRO, is another presidential contender. But Macri is still strying to control the damage over allegations that a police officer who worked for the city's Education Ministry spied on rivals and even allegedly on his brother-in-law.

Macri's brother-in-law was mugged in Greater Buenos Aires on Wednesday and was rushed to hospital with a gunshot wound to his hand and thigh. But he said the next day, when out of hopsital, that he could not say if the case was a straightforward robbery or an attack for having testified in court in connection with the allegations of espionage.

Macri on Friday tackled a completely different issue, and baffled some of his conservative supporters, when he announced that his administration will not appeal a city judge's ruling declaring it is unconstitutional not to allow a homosexual couple to get married.

Duhalde meanwhile came face to face in a tiny court room with Carrió at a hearing on Tuesday. Duhalde had sued Carrió for accusing him in 2005 of "controlling" drug trafficking in Argentina. Carrió said in court that she meant no offense and was speaking strictly in political terms.

The judge on Wednesday cleared Carrió (with Duhalde voicing no complaints). Reports said that Carrió and Duhalde, who are rivals, talked in private for half an hour in court on Tuesday triggering speculation that they will be on speaking terms from now on, in times of political turmoil.

Carrió's Civic Coalition and the Radical Party have issued a number of statements flatly denying that they will be game to any move to throw Fernández de Kirchner out of office. Senator Gerardo Morales, the outgoing chairman of the Radical Party, said the government's bruising style of politics was causing it all the trouble.

The defiant pro-government rally in Plaza de Mayo has been scrapped at the President's request. But the offensive against Grupo Clarín seems far from over. Eduardo Hecker quit as head of the National Securities Commission on Wednesday reportedly in disagreement with a plan to monitor the financial activities of the newspaper mill Paper Prensa controlled by Clarín and La Nación. Hecker was reportedly bullied out by Domestic Trade Secretary Guillermo Moreno which has been accused by the company, in which the state holds a 27 percent share, of recently declaring at a private meeting that there is a plan to nationalize it.

Economy Minister Amado Boudou said that he plans to probe allegations that Papel Prensa has a dominant position in the market that forces provincial newspapers to import paper.
The main concern right now should be the economy. But political volatility is what dominates the news. The Senate before dawn on Thursday approved next year's budget. Fernández de Kirchner on Friday met with US Ambassador Vilma Martínez to discuss Argentina's plans to cancel its 6.8 billion dollar debt with the Paris Club of Creditor nations and its ongoing talks with the International Monetary Funds (IMF).

The INDEC statistics bureau on Thursday reported an 0.8 percent inflation rate in October, which for the first time since 2007 is in agreement with what private economists expected.