By James Neilson

As I See It

Legend has it that, back in the late 1920s, President Hipólito Yrigoyen’s supporters sought to keep the old man happy by concocting just for him a daily newspaper full of good news. In less troubled times, such a ploy might have worked well enough. Many presidents and prime ministers are surrounded by yes-men who make it their business to assure then that everything is going splendidly and, unlike Yrigoyen who was overthrown by the first of what would be a long series of military coups, most of them manage to complete their term without too many mishaps.

Will Cristina Kirchner be one of them? There are plenty of reasons to doubt it. Unfortunately for those who are not privileged to live in the prosperous “real Argentina” — where everybody holidays on the beach that she and a handful of loyalists swear they believe in — but are struggling to get by in the poor, hopelessly corrupt, inflation-ridden and crime-infested country she says is an invention of malicious journalists, she and her husband seem determined to provoke a political upheaval that for many people who are already on the edge could have dire consequences. Failing that, by the time they depart they will have spent so much money that the next government will have to order cuts even more savage that the ones the Greeks are rebelling against.

When last June Néstor Kirchner got mauled in parliamentary elections, optimists assumed that he and his missus would do their best to be nice to the leaders of like-minded opposition factions. That was not to be. Néstor reacted to the slap on the face by huffing and puffing for a while and then opining that the electorate had punished him because what it really wanted was a far larger dose of the same medicine he had been administering to it since May 2003. To judge by their behaviour, he and his wife are determined to cling to that fanciful notion. Whenever they suffer what in less abnormal circumstances would be considered a setback, they simply double the ante and challenge their opponents to do their worst.

It might be thought that, in a country with Argentina’s turbulent history, it would be dangerous for a president to play chicken with a disgruntled opposition, especially one that when taken together enjoys majority support, but Mr and Mrs Kirchner do not think so. Though the “real Argentina” they claim to represent is shrinking by the minute, they clearly have no intention of making any concessions at all. As far as they are concerned, everyone who does not fully agree with them is a loathsome enemy in cahoots with coup-mongers, oligarchs, neoliberals and other such vermin. On Monday, Cristina devoted much of the state-of-the-nation address with which she declared Congress open to berating opposition politicians and judges, accusing some of the latter of releasing criminals in exchange for money. And while she was about it, her aides were busily transferring billions of Central Bank dollars into her government’s coffers.

Not surprisingly, after recovering from the shock, politicians who objected to her getting her fingers on the reserves soon started to express their outrage, letting it be known that this time she had gone too far. To their mind, she has declared war on both the Legislature and the Judiciary, leaving them with no choice but to defend themselves against an insatiable imperial presidency. Just how they will do this is still not clear, but Senators are preparing to do their best to see that Mercedes Marcó del Pont’s term as Central Bank chief comes to a speedy end and thousands of lawyers are trying to dream up ways to foil Cristina’s attempt to rule by decree.

If anything is holding them back, it is their awareness that Cristina, egged on by Néstor, could decide that enough is enough and beat a hasty exit, leaving the rest of the political establishment to pick up the pieces. She reportedly thought of doing just that when vice president Julio Cobos torpedoed the bill that would have allowed her to appropriate much of the farmers’ hard-earned money, but then decided to give the country another chance. As for Néstor Kirchner and his cronies, they have often said that, unlike De la Rúa, they would not flee the Pink House by helicopter, revealing in this manner that they thought it quite probable that their spell in power would come to a sticky end. More recently, it seems, Cristina has being going on about how those who wish her ill want her to share the undignified fate of the former Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya, who was turfed out his country wearing only his pyjamas after playing fast and loose with the local constitution. It may be presumed that in preparation for such a denouement she keeps handy a bag packed with suitable garments.

Argentine politicians are reluctant to see a repeat of the turmoil that erupted in the dying days of 2001 and would very much like to see the constitutional timetable respected for a change, but, with cruel irony, their attachment to the proper formalities has made it easier for Mr and Mrs Kirchner to treat them with contempt. Though so far the two of them have managed to get away with it, if they carry on needling the opposition as they have been doing, their spell in office will soon come to an abrupt end.