By Martín Gambarotta

All the technical stuff about how the government now owns the television rights to first division football games belongs in the sports pages. But you can catch some of the political impact right here. It’s a straightforward story. The administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has signed a deal with the Argentine Football Association (AFA) purportedly worth 600 million pesos a year. AFA has scrapped its 260-million-peso-a-year contract with TSC, a private company half owned by the media group Clarín.

The contract was due to end in 2014. But formally it was terminated on Thursday when Fernández de Kirchner and AFA president Julio Grondona signed the new agreement at the national team’s training grounds in Ezeiza. Looking on was national team manager Diego Maradona. Here is where the whole thing gets political. The ceremony, attended by 800 people and most of the Cabinet, had the tumultuous feel of a political rally and the pomp of a military parade. Goals, the President told the audience, had been “kidnapped” by the private company that banned other channels from airing them before midnight on Sundays. Fernández de Kirchner likened the situation to the disappearance of people during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983). The “kidnapped goals” metaphor did not go down well with Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the human rights activist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980, and others. But the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo backed the President.

Forget the football issue for a moment. What matters here is that the President, even when announcing the ultimate feelgood news of free football on the television, fails to comprehend the basics of how a modern politician should behave to get on the right side of public opinion. Can somebody hire Fernández de Kirchner a proficient spin doctor please? It doesn’t matter whether you are in favour of free football or not. Thursday’s ceremony was overkill, yes. Yet often the critics of the President concentrate on criticizing her manners — and those of her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner.

The President said on Thursday that the government will use state advertising funds to pay for the first year of football. But football, the President said with a delighted Maradona nodding with a chuckle in agreement, is a business that makes money and there is no reason why the state can’t make it work.
Critics accused TSC, the company that owned the rights, of paying too little for the rights and getting the lion’s share of the profits while most clubs are bankrupt. But you don’t have to take sides in this argument to sense that something is wrong. The AFA is sloppy. The private company is sloppy. The government is sloppy.

The government’s deal with the AFA is sketchy. In a broad sense the government spends about one billion pesos in state advertising a year. It is now saying that it will spend 600 million pesos of that money on football. Fernández de Kirchner was democratically-elected, so she can pretty much do what she sees fit. Yet Thursday’s ceremony — carried live on all television channels by order of the government — was not followed up with a press briefing to spell out the deal. The President also said to ruckus applause that any profits from the contract will be shared equally between AFA and Argentina’s Olympic team.

The ceremony, no matter how quirky, carried a symbolic political punch. The President’s husband lost the midterm elections on June 28 against Francisco de Narváez of the centre-right coalition Unión-PRO. Kirchner quit as head of the Peronist party on June 29. Yet less than two months after that defeat the Kirchners have managed to inflict damage on Clarín, the group which they accuse of fiercely opposing their administration and trying to manipulate public opinion.

The group owns Clarín, the nation’s biggest selling newspaper. Kirchner, even after a humiliating defeat in the territory which was supposed to be his stronghold, seems locked in a war with Clarín. The ruling party lost the elections in key districts including Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Santa Fe, Entre Ríos and even in Santa Cruz, Kirchner’s native province in Patagonia.

In the province of Buenos Aires Kirchner was thrashed in the rural towns where farmers fiercely opposed the government’s bid last year to increase grain export duties. Vice-President Julio Cobos, who cast the decisive tie-breaking vote against the hikes in the Senate last year, is now one of the opposition and runs his own party, ConFe.

Cobos, a relatively obscure dissident Radical before he turned on the government in 2008, is the most popular politician in the land. Yet the President’s mandate is scheduled to end in 2011.
It all sounds like one big institutional mess. So what’s new? Argentina has been hit by one major political crisis after another since 1930.

It’s difficult to tell how this particular situation will play out. The Kirchners garnered about 30 percent of the vote nationwide (it roughly coincides with their popularity rating). Opposition politicians are driving home the fact that 70 percent voted against the government on June 28.

The President, after consistently trying to defeat the opposition last year, called consensus talks with all parties on July 9 to discuss the reform of the political system. The call has achieved something ironic. Mischievous Kirchner tried to bring the opposition and the farmers “to their knees” using the confrontational rhetoric of a militant leftwing Peronist. It didn’t work. The ruling party lost the elections. But call consensus talks and see what happens: the opposition seems to be falling apart even after victory.

The Social and Civic Accord, which garnered nearly 30 percent of the vote nationwide, is having an particularly difficult time. The Accord includes the Radical Party, the Civic Coalition headed by Elisa Carrió and Cobos’ ConFe party. Yet Carrió’s recent decision not to attend the consensus talks headed by Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo has triggered a major crisis in the Accord. Carrió has since declared that she will never vote for Cobos, a potential opposition presidential candidate in 2011. Carrió has taken that crisis a step further by announcing this week plans to turn the Civic Coalition into a single party under her leadership. The Civic Coalition is currently made up by Carrió’s ARI, the Unión por Todos party headed by Deputy Patricia Bullrich and GEN, a party headed by Margarita Stolbizer. Stolbizer, who thinks the reform of the system to call presidential primaries is a good idea, irked Carrió by attending the talks with Randazzo.

Stolbizer, the head of the Accord’s list of Lower House candidates in Buenos Aires province in June, has also objected to Carrió’s idea of a single party. The news is that the Accord looks like it is no more. Carrió (herself a former Radical who quit the party before the crisis of 2001) seems to be trying to force the Radical Party into making up its mind about Cobos. Cobos was expelled from the Radical Party in 2007 for being Fernández de Kirchner’s running-mate. But, after his famous vote last year turned him overnight into a sensation, the Radical Party convention held earlier this year said that Cobos will be allowed back as a member when his mandate ends in 2011.

The crisis in the Accord has not damaged Cobos’ popularity. He is still likely to be endorsed by the Radical Party, which commands a political machine nationwide, in 2011 and has the potential to clinch the presidency.

The Accord is not the only thing the government has to worry about. Kirchner’s authority is also being challenged by a group of centre-right dissident Peronists who are experienced and influential. The dissidents include Santa Fe Senator Carlos Reutemann who backed the farmers last year and won the midterm elections after formally severing all ties with Kirchner’s Victory Front. Kirchner has handed over the leadership of the Peronist party to Buenos Aires Governor Daniel Scioli, who run with him on the Lower House ticket that lost the election against De Narváez. Yet there is speculation that former caretaker Eduardo Duhalde is poised to launch an assault to wrestle control of the Peronist party away from the Kirchnerites.

Duhalde met on Monday with former Entre Ríos governor Jorge Busti to discuss the situation in the party after defeat. Duhalde, who originally backed Kirchner in 2003 but was forced into semi-retirement when his faction was defeated by the Kirchnerites two years later, has declared that he wishes to work to reorganize political parties. But guess what? The dissident Peronists are also now arguing with one another. Having Kirchner mostly out of the picture since he was defeated seems to have done more harm than good to the opposition and his foes in the Peronist party.

Duhalde had purportedly prodded Reutemann, a former Formula One driver notorious for his cautious driving when he raced, into formally launching his bid to clinch the Peronist party’s presidential nomination. Reutemann, a former governor, on June 28 defeated the ruling Socialist Party in Santa Fe. Before the elections Reutemann had declared that he would run for president if he won “even by one vote.” But since winning Reutemann is driving cautiously once again and he did not take kindly to Duhalde’s nudging.

Reutemann, in a bewildering move, on Tuesday said that the best presidential candidate for 2011 was Duhalde. There’s a glitch: polls show that Duhalde is not popular enough to win the election. Reutemann probably knew there was a glitch and was simply being ironic. “He threw the ball at me,” Reutemann said, “and now I am throwing it back at him.” Senator Hilda Duhalde (Duhade’s wife) said that she was “surprised” by Reutemann’s comments. On Friday, further exasperated by the week’s events, Senator Duhalde said that she had taken Reutemann’s comment “badly.” She added: “99 percent of the public doesn’t know what Reutemann thinks.” Reutemann also turned down Duhalde’s offer to head a Peronist party presidential ticket in 2002.

It’s pretty clear by now that Reutemann considers the experienced but unpopular Duhalde a burden. Argentine politics have been a muddle for so long that it is not unthinkable that Reutemann, who has also refused to attend the consensus talks, and Carrió could run on the same ticket in 2011.

Supposedly Randazzo is moving ahead with the reform of the political system, which if approved would force all parties — including the Peronist party — to call presidential primaries. There’s speculation that Kirchner — who lost outright but won the election in working-class Greater Buenos Aires — could seek to run in a Peronist party presidential primary. Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández has said that Duhalde lacks “the authority” to overhaul the Peronist party and become its leader. Kirchner was appointed head of the Peronist party in 2008 and was expected to serve a four-year mandate. The party is now headed by Scioli and also includes prominent provincial governors in its leadership. Truck driver Hugo Moyano, the head of the General Labour Confederation (CGT), is also a Peronist party vice-chairman.

Yet all this will mean nothing if the Kirchners’ popularity continues to drop after defeat and the dissident Peronists manage to drum up enough support to throw Scioli and Moyano out. But Moyano’s power comes from the transport unions that he controls not from his seat in the party leadership. A group of pro-Moyano unions met on Wednesday to organize a new political arm, further fuelling talk that Moyano will seek to run for Buenos Aires province governor in 2011. Moyano was summoned by the President for talks also on Wednesday (no official word was released on the meeting). The CGT head was forced to deny that he will seek to run for office (and also said that Duhalde was “a good candidate, but not the best.”)

De Narváez and former Buenos Aires province governor Felipe Solá (the number two candidate on the winning Unión-PRO list) also call themselves dissident Peronists. Solá was scheduled to head a rally yesterday amid speculation that he plans to run for president.

The opposition currently has too many potential presidential candidates for its own good: Carrió, Cobos, Reutemann and Solá. City of Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, the leader of PRO, is another potential candidate. PRO won the elections in this city, but only with a disappointing 31 percent of the votes.

Macri was criticized on Tuesday for not attending the ceremony to mark the 15th anniversary of the AMIA Jewish community building bombing. A spokesman for the relatives of those killed in the terrorist attack also condemned Macri’s decision to name former Federal Police inspector Jorge Palacios as head of the new Metropolitan Police. Palacios is accused of trying to block the investigation into the bombing.

Kirchnerite picket leader Luis D’Elía was also criticized at the ceremony for backing Iran, which investigators believe orchestrated the attack. The ceremony (postponed in July because of the swine flu outbreak) was attended by the President and Cabinet ministers.

The Victory Front meanwhile is holding its ground in Congress. The ruling party is expected to lose control of Congress when the newly elected lawmakers take their seats in December. But a drive by the opposition and the farmers to deliver crippling parliamentary defeats to humiliate the President even before December has failed so far.

The Senate on Thursday approved 38 to 30 to extend for a year the powers Congress delegates on the Executive, including the right to fix export duties. Hundreds of angry farmers, headed by Alfredo De Angeli from Entre Ríos, rattled police barriers outside Congress in a bid to enter the building before the vote.

But to no avail. The farmers had also accused dissident Senator Roxana Latorre, Reutemann’s staunch ally from Santa Fe, of betraying them. Latorre was one of eight Peronist senators who signed the committee resolution clearing the delegated powers for debate, and allowing its approval by a simple majority of those present in the session. (A ninth Peronist senator later signed the same resolution.) The farmers accused Latorre of handing the Kirchners’ victory on a plate by signing the resolution. Latorre said that she had expressed her “complete dissidence” on signing. But it was too late. Reutemann, under fire from the Santa Fe Rural Society, has thrown Latorre out of the two-man caucus even after she had apologized. Reutemann’s caucus, like a Formula One car, now has a single seat.

The row was especially damaging and embarrassing for Reutemann because the Socialists in Santa Fe had accused him during the campaign of having a secret deal with the Kirchners to return to the party after the elections.

Latorre said that she still backed the farmers, but she also accused them of trying to cross an institutional line and of being overanxious to see the President thrown out of office before the end of her mandate in 2011. The Herald reported on Thursday that farmers outside Congress were handing out Latorre’s cell phone number and encouraging demonstrators to call her to voice their discontent. Latorre, who lives in Rosario, was under police protection on Friday. “The farmers,” Solá said on Friday, “no longer have the backing of the urban classes” like they did last year. De Angeli was criticized by Eduardo Buzzi, the leader of the Argentine Small Farmers Federation, who said that he had behaved “like an agitator and not a leader.”

A closer look at Thursday’s vote also shows that the ruling party could still be in control of the Upper House next year. The delegated powers were backed by two senators from Tierra del Fuego and one from Neuquén who are loyal to non-Kirchnerite governors. The ruling party is expected to hold 35 out of 72 seats in the Senate next year. But it will still have a majority with those three senators on its side. To have the delegated powers approved in the Lower House the ruling party also struck a deal with small centre-left parties, agreeing to create a commission to review the delegated powers and limit their use exclusively to the President and the Cabinet chief. The ruling party lost full control of Congress in the June elections. But it could still be half in control with the support of potential allies, especially if the opposition fails to cut out the arguing. The opposition bickering exasperated Senator Gerardo Morales, the chairman of the Radical Party, who on Thursday urged Civic Accord leaders to “stop arguing in public.”

The Senate on Thursday also approved the farming emergency law, which earmarks 500 million pesos to aid farmers hit by droughts and other disasters. The law also exempts 22 districts in southern Buenos Aires province from paying export duties for 180 days to compensate for the drought (another 15 districts are granted a 50 percent discount on duties according to the law). Yet the President will reportedly veto the exemption after one ruling party lawmaker said it had been approved “by mistake.” The government-sponsored bill limiting to five percent the budget funds which can be reallocated by the Cabinet Chief was also approved on Thursday.

The odd thing about the current situation is that the economy is slowing down, but there is no talk of an immediate crisis to go with the political instability. The government reported on Friday that unemployment in the second quarter of this year increased to 8.8 percent from 8 percent in the same period of last year. Economy Minister Amado Boudou also reported on Friday that the primary surplus dropped 80 percent in July from a year earlier. But Boudou, to give the markets something to bite into, also formally unveiled the plan to swap 2.3 billion dollars worth of inflation-linked bonds and has said that he is willing to talk with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).