There was nothing gratuitous about last week’s blatant extortion whereby Corrientes governor-elect Ricardo Colombi (who won last month’s election on an anti-Kirchner platform) was coerced into declaring his support for the Kirchner cause in exchange for funds for his province — in all probability this was deliberately timed as a show of force ahead of this crucial week when the structure of Congress for the next two years will be defined.

Nothing could be clearer than the nationwide rejection of the presidential couple in the June midterm elections and nothing could be more confused than its current expression in Congress with no less than 33 caucuses for the 257 deputies (14 of them one-man or one-woman shows). We know that there will be less than 100 deputies in the ruling Victory Front caucus (some estimates place the total as low as 86) but this already unclear number is extremely relative — not least because of an unabashed ability to co-opt at both a provincial (as demonstrated by Colombi) and individual level. Quite apart from deputies crossing the House floor, the Victory Front has always been able to count on a few dozen allies (e.g. pro-Kirchner Radicals and leftists) while since June the non-Kirchner left has been far more consistent in its support — partly in reaction to the swing to the centre-right reflected by that vote and partly because the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner administration has taken a conscious shift to the left. As if all this were not enough, there is always the weapon of a presidential veto which can only be overridden by a two-thirds majority in Congress. Against this backdrop, the aspiration of some opposition groups to preside both Houses of Congress looks doomed to failure. There remains the drive to chair committees but it is not just a question of gaining a few but also controlling the key ones (e.g. the Budget Committee which before 1983 always went to an opposition deputy, even under the elected dictatorship of Juan Domingo Perón).

The frustratingly scant chances of the new Congress reflecting June’s electoral verdict has both its good and bad sides. It is good because a country as prone to instability as Argentina can ill afford gridlock between its executive and legislative branches. But it is bad because it perpetuates a government which brings ahead the next election campaign while postponing the resolution of all the major problems — and surely the art of governing lies in anticipating, not postponing problems.