By Martin Gambarotta

You can call it soccer. You can call it football. It depends where you grew up. Here it’s called fútbol. The football industry is covered in the sports pages. But there’s no denying that, in Diego Maradona land, there’s a political angle to football. There was huge anticipation about a move by the Argentine Football Association to scrap its 260 million-peso-a-year television rights contract with the company TSC. Much of the anticipation was about the political implications of Julio Grondona, the head of the AFA since 1979, severing ties in unfriendly terms with a company half-owned by the Clarín media group. Néstor Kirchner, the former president, has accused Clarín, the nation’s biggest selling newspaper owned by the group, of making life impossible for the government of his wife, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The government purportedly offered Grondona to buy the rights for 600 million pesos to air football gratis on state television for the masses. Whopee. What next Kirchner? Free Wi-Fi like in San Luis province, please.

The AFA martially pronounced its contract with TSC, set to expire in 2014, “dead” on Tuesday evening. Grondona, who is also vice-president of FIFA, had compared TSC, which made a profit from the deal through pay-per-view, to a husband who beats his wife “and only gives her 200 pesos a year to live on.” But the real political substance came from the speculation that Grondona and Kirchner had a secret deal to have AFA divorce the Clarín group. Government officials denied any agreement with AFA prior to its decision to severe ties. But Grondona met with the President on Thursday and there is every chance that, when the AFA first division starts next Friday, it will be aired on state television.  TSC has announced it will seek in court compensation to the tune of 1.5 billion pesos. Yet the political symbolism of the story is much more straightforward: Kirchner, less than two months after suffering a humiliating defeat in the midterm elections of June 28, has pulled a fast one on the Clarín group.

Clarín’s frontpages are extremely influential. Kirchner has accused the daily of deliberately trying to manipulate public opinion. It is a never-ending argument. But mischievous Kirchner has delivered his blow. Grondona’s AFA was clearly fed up with the contract and dug in. Some sports writers said that the end of what they deemed an unfair contract was cause to celebrate. Critics say that the way in which the contract was scrapped is another sign that Argentina under the Kirchners is simply too unpredictable to do business.

In June Kirchner was defeated in Buenos Aires province by Francisco de Narváez, the head of the centre-right Unión-PRO list. Kirchner, now a deputy-elect, quit as head of the ruling Peronist party the day after he lost (June 29). Yet here and now the Kirchners are behaving like they are alive and kicking footballs.

What’s going on? The outcome of the June 28 election should have supposedly humbled — and even humiliated — the Kirchners. The Peronist party lost in Buenos Aires province, its stronghold. It lost in the City of Buenos Aires. It lost in Córdoba province. But there’s another way of looking at the outcome of the election. The nation is now politically deadlocked and roughly divided into three slices: 30 percent Kirchnerite, 30 percent Radical-Civic Coalition, and 30 percent centre-right.

Yes, the voters turned their backs on Kirchner. But the government nationalized the private pension fund system last year and is now sitting on a coffer of 24 billion dollars. Kirchner, even in defeat, is vowing in public to fight on. Kirchner, visiting a housing complex managed by the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo on Thursday, said the prospect of free football on television was an “institutional improvement.” He added that the call to consensus talks with the opposition does not mean that the President will surrender her political ideas.

Still, even with Kirchner trying to sound confident, the breath of a major institutional crisis is in the air. Yet there seems to be no immediate whopping economic crisis to go with it. The President is still running the nation, which is why state television — with its wallet full of taxpayers’ pesos — is poised to offer more than any private company can cough up for the right to show football.

There is no crash here and now. But the economy, due to the world crunch, is not exactly performing brilliantly. The economy shrank 0.4 percent in June compared to the year before, the state-run statistics bureau INDEC reported on Friday. INDEC also revised the growth rate for May from 0.0 percent to a 0.3 percent fall. It is the first such drop reported by INDEC since 2002. Kirchner, who handed over power to the current President in 2007, took office in 2003. Private economists claim that Argentina has been in a recession since late last year. Kirchner overhauled INDEC in 2007 and critics allege that the government has been underreporting inflation since then.

Amado Boudou, the economy minister appointed in a Cabinet reshuffle in July, has vowed to put INDEC right by announcing that it will be monitored by academics, the business community, organized labour and consumer groups. INDEC on Wednesday reported that the cost of living had increased 0.6 percent in July, lower than what was estimated by private economists. The monitoring has not yet started. Boudou needs to make INDEC credible to the critics again if he is to last long on the job.

Time is not necessarily on Boudou’s side because, if not this year, the economy may crash in 2010. An odd thing about the current situation is that it’s not clear whose side time is on. Back in June when they lost the elections the Kirchners looked in desperate need for time to catch their breath. The President on July 9 called all opposition parties to join consensus talks to discuss the reform of the political system. Fernández de Kirchner trumpeted a plan to call a meeting of the Economic and Social Council (yet to be formally established) to agree on policies with business leaders and the trade unions. Practically all political parties, including De Narváez’s, agreed to meet with Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo in Government House. Elisa Carrió, the leader of the Civic Coalition, was the only prominent national leader to first shun the talks, arguing that they were a sly move by the government to buy time.

Carrió’s decision back in July prompted a crisis in the Social and Civic Accord, of which her coalition is a member (along with the Radical Party and Vice-President Julio Cobos’ ConFe party). The Socialist Party also had a standing agreements with the Accord in Santa Fe province. All Accord parties but Carrió’s met with Randazzo. Margarita Stolbizer, a leader of the Civic Coalition from Buenos Aires province, also agreed to talk.

Stolbizer, and most other opposition leaders, said they had not choice but to agree to the talks because during the campaign they had accused the Kirchners of not seeking consensus on key issues. Ironically, the government inflicted more harm on the opposition by inviting it to talk than any of Kirchner’s rants ever did during the campaign he lost. The two main opposition coalitions — the Accord and Unión-PRO — were always going to have a difficult time delivering on their promise not to argue among themselves and stick together after the elections. You need a guidebook to understand the works of both the Accord and Unión-PRO.

Carrió’s decision to catch a flight with her children to take a holiday in Miami in order not to be around for the negotiations in Government House, prompted a crisis in the Accord. Carrió had made things worse when, once back from “seeing Mickey Mouse” a week ago, she declared that she would never vote for Cobos as president. Technically both Carrió and Cobos are two potential presidential candidates in the Accord.

Cobos was kicked out of the Radical Party when he sided with the Kirchners in 2007. But a Radical convention earlier this decided to allow Cobos back once he serves out his mandate after the Vice-President last year famously cast the decisive tie-breaking vote against a government bill to increase soybean export duties, which was fiercely opposed by the farmers. (Cobos yesterday also criticized the planned football contract).

By declaring that she does not find Cobos, which polls show is the most popular politician in the land for turning on the Kirchners during the farm conflict, acceptable as a presidential candidate Carrió seems to be dynamiting the Accord to bits. She has exasperated Cobos’ backers. Daniel Katz, a pro-Cobos lawmaker, said on Tuesday that Carrió “is the pebble in the shoe of the Accord.”

There is speculation that the Radical Party is gearing not only to accept Cobos back as a member, but to also anoint him as presidential candidate and possibly also agree to grant him control of the party. Yet Senator Gerardo Morales, the chairman of the Radical Party, added more confusion on Wednesday night when he said that the new leader of the party must belong to the faction that stayed in the opposition and did not run with the Kirchners in 2007, when they were hugely popular. As things now stand it is not clear whether Cobos will be fully endorsed by the Radical Party in 2011. The President’s popularity — and that of her husband — plunged dramatically during the farm conflict over export duties last year.

The Radical Party leadership, headed by Morales, called a press conference on Thursday. The party issued a statement accusing the government of trying to use the round of consensus talks to buy time. “Dialogue has failed,” the party said, “and Argentina is on the brink of social collapse.” But Morales also called on all Accord leaders to stop bickering in public.

Carrió on Friday explicitly celebrated the fact that Morales “was back in power” in the Radical Party. She also blasted Kirchner’s purported deal with “mobster” Grondona. But she implied that the Civic Accord would not be game to any “undemocratic” move to force the President out of office before 2011. The Radicals have called for a meeting with the Cabinet chief and have all but slammed the door on the talks. But Randazzo on Friday turned the other cheek and said he was confident the second round of negotiations will continue next week.

City of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the leader of the centre-right party PRO, on Wednesday also asked for a new meeting with the President. Macri, De Narváez’s ally, also denied any immediate plans to run for President in 2011. His comments came only days after De Narváez had declared that Unión-PRO had two potential presidential candidates, Macri and dissident Peronist Deputy-elect Felipe Solá. De Narváez (who cannot run for president because he was born in Colombia) has said that Unión-PRO should stage an open primary to choose its presidential candidate. On Friday he also said the talks with the government on political reform were “dying.”

At times, even when swiping the football away from Clarín, the not-so-popular President looks at the mercy of the provincial governors and Congress and struggling to stay in control of the situation. The economy is not crashing. But it is creaking. The President’s husband is even struggling to hold things together in his native Patagonian province, Santa Cruz, where the economy minister has quit.
Fernández de Kirchner always seems to be very close to getting on the wrong side of short-tempered public opinion for good. Federal Planning Minister Julio De Vido, speaking before a Lower House committee on Wednesday, was forced to announce that the government was reversing a hike in natural gas and power rates for high-income clients. Rumours were swirling that the hike, which critics said hit more clients than the government said, was about to prompt angry street demonstrations across the nation.

The pro-government General Labour Confederation (CGT) had issued a statement on Tuesday declaring that, “contrary to what the government is saying,” the hike was affecting workers. The President reportedly ordered De Vido, who had staunchly defended the hikes and said they were designed to save on subsidies, to take back the hikes. De Vido, as word spread that he could be on the way out, said the decision to quash the increase will cost the government nearly 500 million pesos in subsidies. The government had insisted it was right. A week ago the ruling party had even managed to vote against a move by the opposition in the Senate to scrap the increases. But the hikes had turned into a public relations disaster that De Vido, a member of Kirchner’s inner circle, blamed on the private utilities who came up with the plan to save on subsidies.

These are testing times for the ruling party in Congress. But they will be more testing when the new Congress, elected in June, sits in December and the ruling party loses control of both houses. Ruling Victory Front lawmakers have managed to hold their ground so far even after defeat. The Lower House before dawn on Thursday approved 136 to 100 to extend for a year the powers Congress delegates on the Executive, including the right to fix export duties. The outcome of the Lower House was a clear victory for Deputy Agustín Rossi, the head of the ruling party’s caucus. Rossi leads a bloc of 106 lawmakers (105 voted in favour on Thursday). The bill was also backed by a group of small provincial and centre-left parties, but only after the government agreed to limit the use of the delegated powers to the President and the Cabinet chief and establish a commission that will study the issue before the new vote next year.

The issue divided the centre-left party SI. Four SI lawmakers backed the bill, but four others (plus ally Deputy Claudio Lozano) abstained after meeting with deputy-elect Pino Solanas, who came second in the midterm elections in the City of Buenos Aires. Solanas, who has refused to join the consensus talks, reportedly tried to convince the lawmakers that they should vote against the bill along with the other opposition parties (mainly PRO and Accord).

The delegated powers on Thursday swiftly cleared the committee stage in the Senate, which is scheduled to vote this week. There’s an outside chance that the opposition, prodded by persistent lobbying by the farmers, will manage in the Senate to kill the delegated powers, like it did last year with the export duties.
The mood is still foul. Alberto Fernández, the Kirchnerite Cabinet chief between 2003-2008, has complained that he believes that his phones (and email) are being tapped by the government he served.
Any defeat in Congress before December could send out the signal that the ruling party is falling apart and prompted an unpredictable institutional crisis. Prominent dissident Peronist senators who defied Kirchner’s authority as party leader and backed the farmers’ demands sit in the Senate, including Senate Fe Senator Carlos Reutemann. Reutemann, like Carrió, has also refused to be part of the political reform talks.

The Senate committee on Thursday also approved for debate a bill sponsored by the President to limit the Cabinet chief’s so-called “superpowers” to reallocate funds to five percent of the budget (the government can currently reallocate all funds).

The President, after calling for consensus in July, is now trying to regain the initiative once again. Fernández de Kirchner on Friday trumpeted a 1.5-billion-peso plan to fund co-operatives in Greater Buenos Aires that will employ 100,000 people. She said that the plan is to expand the co-operatives nationwide next year and cost nine billion pesos. Fernández de Kirchner refrained from announcing a universal child benefit, championed separately both by the Carrió and the CTA union umbrella group, and challenged the opposition to say where the funds to pay for it would come from. The President estimated at least seven billion pesos a year are needed to pay a universal child benefit of 135 pesos a month. A debate on the child benefit issue in Congress could unite Carrió and the centre-left. Yet it is not clear whether the ruling party will oppose a child benefit bill outright if and when it is tabled.

The President complained on Friday that she is given a difficult time by the press because she is out to redistribute wealth and slay vested interests. In past centuries, she said, rebels were executed. Now, she said in reference to the uproar over the football contract, leaders who do not side with the powerful are subjected to “media executions.” Yet such talk of rebellion comes at a time a judge is planning to take a close look at the President’s sworn statement of assets after he personal fortune increased 158 percent last year.

The whole region seems to be locked in a row. Fernández de Kirchner attended the Union of South American Nations UNASUR summit in Quito on Monday which was dominated by Colombia’s decision to allow US forces to use seven military bases in its territory. The summit was not attended by President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Fernández de Kirchner said that a new UNASUR summit will be held on August 24 in Argentina, this time with Uribe. In Quito, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela complained that the “winds of war” were now sweeping through the continent. Chávez’s rhetoric supposedly irked both Fernández de Kirchner (and Brazil’s Lula da Silva). But Chávez’s comments did no harm to his strategic alliance with the Kirchners. The President met with Chávez in Caracas on Tuesday and business deals worth 1.1 billion dollars were signed.