By James Neilson

As I See It

Néstor Kirchner must be in a foul mood these days. Instead of getting praised as he deserves for his ability to rake in huge amounts of money while still finding time to manage the country, he finds himself being pilloried by a gang of useless do-gooders for having had the good sense to buy a couple of million dollars when it looked as though the peso was about to lose some of its value. What was wrong with that? When in doubt, all self-respecting Argentines buy dollars. In any case, he used the money to acquire a hotel, so nobody can say he was trying to sell the peso short. Did he do anything illegal? Even hostile jurists and everyone in Argentina is a legal expert agreed that as far as they know he had not violated any law. So what was all the fuss about?

The bewilderment Kirchner surely feels is understandable. Like his wife, he has contrived to play two roles that only the hopelessly naïve think are mutually incompatible. In public, Mr and Mrs Kirchner are fierce critics of just about everything to do with finance; they loathe bankers, treat money-changers with contempt, have nothing but scorn for the “neoliberal” economy ministers of rich countries who failed to make speculators toe the line and extol the virtues of people who actually make things and therefore, they insist, contribute to the “real economy” we all depend on.

In private, both are clever financial operators who like nothing better than playing the market, buying and selling, and have made their fortune as property developers, an activity that, perhaps unfairly, has about as much prestige among moralists as dealing in second-hand cars. In their fashion, the Kirchners are a local version of the “champagne socialists”, a breed whose representatives are to be found everywhere in Europe, who manage to combine a pronounced love for expensive material goodies with a politically very useful social conscience that they are at pains to display whenever an opportunity arises.

Until quite recently, few people thought it was worth their while to attack them for the evident discrepancy between what they said and what they did, but times have changed. No sooner had the news of Néstor’s timely purchase of two million dollars leak out, than opposition leaders started berating both him and his wife, accusing them of nauseating hypocrisy, obscenity, absolutely scandalous behaviour and a great deal else besides.

As tends to happen when regime change is in the offing, Argentina seems to have entered a phase of moralistic fervour that will continue until the people who allegedly corrupted her have been satisfactorily dealt with. For the Kirchners, this means that sooner or later they may have to choose between going to gaol, the fate the Civic Coalition parliamentarian Carlos Morán assumes is in store for them, and going into exile; probably in Venezuela providing their great friend Hugo Chávez survives long enough to take them under his wing.

As far as some of those who are determined to prove that the Kirchners made their enviable fortune by illegal means are concerned, Néstor would not have bought those dollars unless he had been tipped off by someone in the know, so to nail him it will be necessary to get whoever gave him inside information to spill the beans. Others, who are a bit more realistic, point out that though back in October 2008 Néstor was in theory merely a private citizen, in fact he was running the economy with the help of Guillermo Moreno and, had he so desired, would have been perfectly capable of ordering a massive devaluation of the peso. That was, and is, common knowledge, but few people like to point it out, perhaps because most understand that for years much of the country accepted a patently absurd arrangement as though it were something perfectly normal.

Mr and Mrs Kirchner could behave outrageously for so long because Parliament, the judicial branch of government and public opinion let them get away with it. This being the case, it seems a bit late to wax indignant over what, from the ruling couple’s point of view, was just a routine financial operation of the kind everyone had become accustomed to. Unfortunately for them, however, hereabouts lengthy periods in which the powerful can do no wrong, alternate with others in which they can do nothing right.
 For what may be described as psychological reasons, people who for years shrug off stories about the crimes committed by office-holders as just so much malicious gossip suddenly decide that the time has come to make them pay for everything they have done, and then some, thereby purging themselves of any feelings of guilt that may happen to bother them.

Once democracy had been resurrected, it was hard to find anyone whohad ever put in a good word about the military regime; after the economy capsized in 2001 and 2002, those willing to admit having voted for Carlos Menem seemed equally scarce on the ground; by the time 2011 rolls round, the Kirchnerites will in all likelihood have been added to the list of endangered species. As the reaction to Cristina’s consort’s purchase of a measly couple of million dollars has reminded us, that is how things work in this part of the world.