By Martín Gambarotta

November in Buenos Aires is famous worldwide as the month of the jacaranda in all their riotous colour (hence so many international visitors around this time of the year) but last week it was the pickets who were in full riotous bloom with downtown traffic havoc much of the time.

In the eyes of a government which sees control of the streets as a key political thermometer, this is more than just a traffic problem — especially for an administration which likes to see an elitist minority against whom to rally the masses on the other side of the trenches, not the likes of the CCC class struggle movement. If the political reform bill whipped so rapidly through Senate committee stage last week was partly designed to clear out everything on the government’s left (e.g. Fernando “Pino” Solanas), then perhaps the city’s clogged streets were an advanced revenge for that reform as a kind of anticipated extra-parliamentary opposition.

The faltering control of the streets highlights the dualism of a government capable of such spasms of omnipotence as the political reform passage or (even more importantly for the next two years) the extension of economic emergency powers but barely commands 18 percent in the opinion polls. There is nothing very new about this unpopularity (which dates back at least 18 months) but the street disorders make it more visible.

The extension of the economic emergency for two years (by a 38-23 vote in the Senate) was a political triumph but also a confession of weakness. If a government has to plead an economic emergency when it has reduced poverty by three-quarters since 2003 while keeping both inflation and unemployment in single digits (at least according to its own figures) together with creating millions of jobs and taking Central Bank reserves to record levels, then either it is power-mad or there are problems in Paradise.
This flurry of Upper House action occurred before the 24 new senators (or 23 of them at any rate) were sworn in but there is increasing pessimism as to whether the new Congress as from December 10 will make much difference — quite apart from the shadow of presidential vetoes (which can only be overridden by a two-thirds majority), it will be a hung parliament with unity in opposition ranks as elusive as ever. But President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s impulsive decision to extend this year’s parliamentary activity to December 10 in order to complete passage of the political reform (contradicting previous assurances that final passage would be left until next year) could lead to a field day for the new Congress with its opposition majority on December 10 itself.

Nevertheless, hopes of an effective opposition were hardly helped by the foolish mass walkout accelerating committee stage clearance of the political reform on Tuesday — if the CFK administration is often accused of aligning itself uncomfortably close to Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, then Argentina’s opposition would also seem to be emulating their Venezuelan counterparts (who turned Venezuela’s Congress into one vast Chávez echo chamber by boycotting the last legislative elections). With all minor parties standing to lose from the reform while the main Radical party is anxious to avoid any impression of a new Olivos Pact (the constitutional reform deal struck between the late 1893-9 Radical president Raúl Alfonsín and 1989-99 Peronist president Carlos Menem in late 1993), the ruling Victory Front was voting for virtually the first time this year without any of its usual allies.

But with no opposition there was not even time for Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo to set his seal on proceedings — zero debate when surely legislation defining the electoral ground rules needs more consensus than any other. Which is not to deny the need for political reform to reorganize the party landscape with over 700 political parties in Argentina, 33 of which are represented in Congress (14 as one-man or one-woman shows). And even if Néstor Kirchner’s zeal to bestow on himself the same benefit denied Menem in 2003 (namely, a Peronist primary) is repugnant, at least it would save the general elections from being yet another Peronist primary (absent in 2007 when they took the form of Kirchner naming his wife CFK).

BEYOND CONGRESS. Outside the parliamentary sphere the political news tended to be dominated by secondary issues in the view of this columnist — City Hall’s phone-tapping scandal and the video showing Venezuelan businessman Guido Antonini Wilson (he of the dollar-laden suitcases) at a 2007 Government House reception. While professional self-interest dictates concern over the government’s continuing onslaught against Papel Prensa newsprint manufacturers, in many ways the most alarming development of this week was the four-month trusteeship slapped on Autopistas del Sol (Ausol) highway toll company as a symptom of creeping nationalization.

This intervention was further proof of the wisdom of never believing anything until officially denied because Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido had disavowed any moves towards nationalization over the weekend, only for the trusteeship to be imposed on Monday.

Perhaps this move could be seen as a distraction from Papel Prensa if it were not for the fact that the whole drive to seize control of newsprint and thus extort loyalty along the same lines as dosing federal revenue-sharing to the provinces is so crudely blatant, almost deliberately so — from the same team which brought you the science fiction of INDEC statistics bureau, Domestic Trade Secretary Guillermo Moreno and newly appointed Papel Prensa state director Beatriz Paglieri. Moreno enlisted Economy Minister Amado Boudou (supposedly his superior) to go to Congress and demand an investigation into the company when surely the state (as a 27 percent shareholder) should have all the information it needs.
The Ausol trusteeship received minimal media attention and would be trivial if it did not fall into a pattern — not only a very similar trusteeship slapped on TGN gas distributors at the end of 2008 but the relentless drive to squeeze the Italians out of Telecom. What certainly was trivial was the sum whose default triggered the state invasion — nine or 10 million pesos (obscene double standards when compared with the monthly losses which are so freely granted to Aerolíneas Argentinas).

This in turn was the result of a syndrome affecting all public utilities — frozen rates which have never been updated to the devaluation of early 2002. This problem is an absolutely common denominator but the government’s handling of it is totally arbitrary — along Romeo and Juliet lines of “Some are pardon’d and some are punish’d,” some shortfalls are subsidized while others are penalized as severely as in the case of Ausol.

This creeping nationalization might well be a terminal illness for the fiscal surplus so vital for Kirchner’s construction of his campaign “warchest,” which seems to have fallen into the error of permanent electioneering — such a populist move as free televised soccer came after the midyear elections while such lavish gestures as the recent universal child benefit are almost two years before the next vote. This is especially problematic when Boudou in particular and the government in general seem to have taken the decision to incur new debt in order to keep the funds flowing — in that context the primary surplus (which still stands at some nine billion pesos even after all the extravagance) becomes less important than the overall fiscal deficit, which is already 6.5 billion. Last week also saw a presidential decree casually tossed in to increase the budget by 25 billion pesos overnight (the shortfall is really 35 billion but special drawing rights from the International Monetary Fund cover 10 billion) — this decree, along with the extended emergency powers and the scope for vetoes, only goes to underline even further the likely irrelevance of Congress. In short, the cupboard looks bare even after robbing the provinces and tapping the AFJP private pension funds via their new home of ANSeS social security administration (run by Boudou at the time of the AFJP confiscation).

The deficit still remains far more manageable than in most countries of the world (with far more ambitious reflationary packages against the global crisis given a new lease of life by the Dubai moratorium) and international liquidity is far more ample than the struggling real economies would warrant. This is certainly the direction in which Boudou is heading but might not Kirchner prefer Moreno tough guy methods just to show an increasingly unruly street who is boss and perhaps curry favour among the leftwing allies being alienated by the political reform?

Whatever his choice, inflation is bound to increase next year — both because of consumer-driven pickup and a weak dollar. This latter factor has induced Brazil to introduce capital controls against hot money over the last month but Boudou does not seem to share that caution.

But instead the telephone-tapping accusations dogging City Mayor Mauricio Macri’s Metropolitan Police appointments continue prominent — the more so because Macri seems to have gone on the defensive rather than attempt any counterattack. In carefully phased damage control, the initial appointment of Jorge “Fino” Palacios (the man accused so doggedly by Federal Judge Norberto Oyarbide of bugging) to head the stillborn Metropolitan Police was admitted to be a mistake — first by City Hall chief-of-staff Marcos Peña over the weekend, then former deputy mayor Gabriela Michetti and finally Macri himself. But since such CFK Cabinet members as Alberto Fernández and Graciela Ocaña complain of telephone interference, why does not Macri turn the Watergate logic of Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández against the national government if presiding over espionage does indeed provide ample grounds for resignation?

Yet even before the espionage scandal mushroomed, Macri has been faltering since the June midterm elections when the list of Michetti (soon to become deputy) could not even scrape a third of the vote. To complete Macri’s discomfiture, he found himself at odds with Cardinal-Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio over his failure to appeal a court ruling in favour of gay marriage (which Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli was quick to criticize).

Yet there is a way of taking distance from this innovation without falling into gay-bashing or homophobia — to defend and even expand the rights under civil union (established in this city since 2002) while opposing the use of the word “matrimony” which has its semantic roots in motherhood.

Most media celebrated the final admission of Cabinet Chief Fernández as to the validity of the Antonini Wilson video but his column has its doubts. The alleged Antonioni Wilson of the video bears little resemblance to the fat slob who became notorious in the latter half of 2007 and looks far more like the version spruced up the FBI last year and turned into a witness — photoshop is so easy these days. Might not Aníbal Fernández be all too ready to “admit” the validity of a video fuelling a scandal which ultimately tars most De Vido (the minister behind the Venezuelan connection), his biggest rival within the government.

The opposition has called for the interpellation of Aníbal Fernández and, of course, it is a scandal that a man caught illegally smuggling 800,000 dollars into the country should be a guest at a government reception but there were also infiltrators in a Washington DC reception last week and there are far more important institutional issues at stake.

LABOUR ETC. The battle for the streets not only disturbs the Peronist government but also their organized labour allies because pickets are viewed by the trade unions as competition just as the left threatens to outflank Peronism. Before taking off to Rome, CFK was thus at pains to oppose the union pluralism upheld by a Supreme Court ruling, arguing that strong unions necessitated monopoly — music in the ears of CGT secretary-general Hugo Moyano. The teamster took issue himself with union pluralism by the oblique method of attacking the Supreme Court source of that ruling — in so doing, he was also supporting one of his main allies, court clerks union leader Julio Piumato, in his battle to work collective wage bargaining into the judicial budget controlled by the Supreme Court.

Yet at the same time events seemed to be working against at least one union monopoly when the subway shop stewards (source of much of the traffic mayhem in recent months) seemed to be winning over the Labour Ministry in their drive to create their own union independent of the UTA transport workers union, another key ally of Moyano, despite the stubborn opposition of the latter.

In other labour news, INDEC announced third-quarter unemployment as slightly up from last year at 9.1 percent while both teachers and hospital workers remained on the warpath in Buenos Aires province — not only has this school year been lost in terms of ensuring a minimal 180 days of classes but there are no assurances that the bicentenary year of 2010 will be any better. Various labour grievances in a recession year also contributed to last week’s traffic disruption although there were other protest groups (including pseudo-veterans from the 1982 South Atlantic War claiming that their mainland military service at the time entitles them to the same pension rights as those on the front line on the islands).

One teacher dedicated to her profession was slain by car robbers in the Pilar area neighbourhood of Derqui and this (coming on top of a similar murder in the Avellaneda suburb of Wilde last week) made crime the big issue of the week in Greater Buenos Aires while impossibly blocked streets were the main trauma downtown.

Even though arrests were promptly made in both cases, there were repeated demonstrations and Buenos Aires Security Minister Carlos Stornelli’s job was rumoured to be on the line with Ezeiza Mayor Alejandro Granados (who boasts a “zero tolerance” policy in his district) and recently remarried ex-taxman Santiago Montoya (of all people) being tipped to replace him. But instead Scioli unveiled a new security plan at the end of the week.

The authorities are not insensitive to the outrage over crime (CFK will be granting an audience to the widower of the Derqui upon her return from Rome) but public opinion is far from satisfied.

Despite incessant speeches and announcements including jabs at her favourite targets, international relations seemed to leave President Fernández de Kirchner almost aloof from domestic affairs.
 Her week started with the visit of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas while on Thursday she was already winging her way to Rome to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Beagle Channel Treaty with her Chilean colleague Michelle Bachelet and Pope Benedict XVI (wearing the severest black in a perception of ecclesiastical norms which is a couple of centuries out of date).

The visit of the amiable Abbas (who disavowed intifada) contrasted sharply with the highly controversial visit of Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Brazil — how is that such different people can share the same first name? Brazil’s Lula seems to think that his giant country’s newfound emerging power status includes the responsibility of constructive engagement but he is really playing with fire in gratuitously approaching a troublespot so far from this region.

With Abbas, CFK pressed for a Palestinian state and leaned on the United States to sort out the Middle East.

Last but not least, there were severe floods in northeastern provinces with thousands evacuated and at least three deaths — what an abrupt change from the droughts of the past year.