Recent developments: the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Argentina: Recent developments: the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Factional division in both the PJ and the UCR characterized the elections of October 2007. Following several months of speculation concerning President Kirchner’s intention to seek re-election, in July it was announced that his wife, Cristina Fernández, would instead stand as the FPV candidate in the presidential election. Her bid was supported by a significant section of the UCR, known as the ‘K Radicals’, whereas another faction of that party—the so-called ‘L Radicals’—endorsed the candidacy of Lavagna, whose Concertación para Una Nación Avanzada (UNA) coalition also received support from Peronists opposed to President Kirchner’s policies. Alberto Rodríguez Saá (brother of Adolfo Rodríguez Saá) entered the contest representing another anti-Kirchner faction of the PJ, the Frente Justicia, Unión y Libertad (Frejuli). Fernández’s campaign was damaged to some extent by a number of allegations of corruption that affected the Government in 2007, including Miceli’s resignation as Minister of Economy and Production in July following judicial investigations into the discovery of a large quantity of cash in her office. (She was replaced by Miguel Peirano.) In the following month a scandal surrounded the discovery of nearly US $800,000 in cash in the suitcase of Guido Antonini Wilson, a Venezuelan businessman who was travelling from Venezuela to Argentina on an aircraft chartered by a state-owned company. Opposition parties accused the Government of illegally importing the money in order to fund Fernández’s election campaign.

In spite of these obstacles, Fernández won a decisive victory in the presidential election held on 28 October 2007, securing 41.8% of the votes cast. No candidate succeeded in unifying the opposition: Elisa M. A. Carrió of the Afirmación para una República Igualitaria, who stood as part of the Coalición Cívica alliance, obtained 21.3% of the vote, while Lavagna received 15.6% of votes cast and Rodríguez Saá took just 7.1%. Fernández’s margin of victory was thus considerably in excess of the 10 percentage points below which a run-off ballot would have been required. The participation rate was 76.2%. Following the concurrent partial elections to the Congreso the FPV legislative bloc emerged with 120 seats in the Cámara de Diputados and 42 seats in the Senado, thereby gaining an overall majority in the upper chamber, while the UCR’s representation was reduced to 24 and eight seats, respectively. President Fernández was sworn in on 10 December. Her Cabinet retained seven members of the outgoing administration.

In mid-March 2008 the four main agricultural unions began strike action and erected roadblocks in protest at sharp increases in tariffs on the export of soybeans, sunflower products and other foodstuffs. Despite causing serious food shortages, the protests attracted widespread popular support, and violent clashes occurred in Buenos Aires between government supporters and those sympathetic to the farmers. The Government defended the tax rises as necessary to control inflation resulting from substantial rises in grain prices on international markets, as well as to guarantee domestic supplies. A 30-day truce was called by the unions in April to allow for negotiations with the Government; however, strikes resumed in May after talks failed to yield significant concessions from either side. Meanwhile, a rally in Rosario organized by the farming unions in late May was attended by an estimated 200,000 people, while further large-scale demonstrations took place in mid-June in protest at the Government’s increasingly uncompromising attitude towards the unions’ demands. Shortly afterwards, and in response to the public exhortation of Vice-President Julio César Cleto Cobos, President Fernández agreed to allow the Congreso to ratify the tariff increases. (The farmers’ fourth and final strike ended two days later.) The ensuing draft legislation was narrowly approved by the Cámara de Diputados, but was defeated in the Senado in mid-July by the casting vote of Vice-President Cobos, the chamber’s President. The decree that had introduced the tariff increases was subsequently revoked. The Government’s defeat in the legislature, which occurred despite the FPV’s dominance of both chambers, resulted in the resignation of the Cabinet Chief, Alberto Fernández. He was replaced by Sergio Massa. Cobos, a former UCR member who had been expelled from the party in 2007 for allying with Cristina Fernández, rejected suggestions that he too should stand down.

In October 2008 the Government announced plans to assume state control of Argentina’s 10 private pension funds (Administradoras de Fondos de Jubilaciones y Pensiones—AFJPs). President Fernández declared that nationalization would protect workers’ investments from the decline in the value of the funds caused by turmoil in world-wide financial markets. The scheme was strongly criticized by the opposition, which claimed that the Government intended to use the AFJPs’ assets (worth some US $30,000m.) to meet its rising debt-servicing obligations. None the less, the take-over received congressional approval in November and took effect in January 2009. Later in November, as part of a major programme of spending on public works intended to stimulate economic growth, a new Ministry of Production was created, with Débora Adriana Giorgi appointed as Minister.

In March 2009 President Fernández announced her intention to bring forward by four months the mid-term congressional elections due in October. A bill temporarily to amend the existing electoral legislation was approved by the Congreso later in March, and elections were consequently scheduled for 28 June. Critics of the Government alleged that the move was an attempt to lessen the electoral damage that the FPV might have suffered later in the year as a result of the worsening economic situation. In spite of the rescheduling, the Government performed badly in the mid-term elections, losing its majority in both legislative houses. Following the ballot, the FPV’s representation was reduced from 116 to 87 in the 257-seat lower house and from 38 to 30 in the Senado. Notably, the list of candidates headed by former President Kirchner in the Province of Buenos Aires secured fewer seats in the Cámara de Diputados than that led by Francisco de Narváez of the centre-right Unión PRO alliance; immediately after the ballot Kirchner resigned as President of the PJ (although the party leadership committee voted to reject his resignation in November, and he reassumed the PJ presidency in March 2010). Nevertheless, the fragmented nature of the opposition meant that the FPV remained the largest congressional bloc. The UCR held 43 of the seats in the Cámara de Diputados, although it was allied to the Partido Socialista and the Coalición Cívica, among others, bringing its total support to around 70. The Unión PRO, comprising the Propuesta Republicana (PRO) and various dissident Peronist factions, could count on the support of some 47 deputies in the lower house. The elected deputies took up their seats in early December.

Following the elections both Carlos Fernández, the Minister of Economy and Public Finance, and the Cabinet Chief, Sergio Massa, resigned. Amado Boudou was appointed to the public finance ministry, while Aníbal Domingo Fernández, hitherto justice and security minister, became Cabinet Chief. Boudou had presided over the nationalization of the AFJPs in 2008 and his appointment was a signal that the Fernández Government intended to continue with its economic policies despite its seeming unpopularity with the electorate. In August 2009 the Congreso approved a further year’s extension to the temporary law allowing certain legislative powers to be delegated to the executive. The original legislation, which notably allowed the Government to set the agricultural export tariffs, the raising of which had prompted the ongoing dispute with the farming unions, had been approved during the 2001–02 financial crisis. In the same month Fernández used her presidential veto to overturn another law temporarily suspending grain export duties and granting emergency aid to the agricultural sector. The Government claimed that income from the tariffs would fund anti-poverty initiatives, launched in the wake of criticism by the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Benedict, who referred to the ‘scandal of poverty and social inequality’ prevalent in Argentina. In November, moreover, the Senado approved the extension until the end of 2011 of further executive ‘super powers’, first granted in January 2002, which allowed the Government to regulate prices, renegotiate public utility contracts and restructure public debt without congressional approval.

The Government succeeded in gaining legislative approval for a controversial reform of the media in October 2009. The new law provided for a reduction in the number of television or radio licences that broadcasting companies were allowed to own, from 24 to 10, and the establishment of a federal body to oversee the broadcast media. Critics of the legislation claimed that it gave the Government too much control over the sector and that President Fernández’s supporters had rushed through adoption of the proposals before they lost control of the Congreso in December. In December the Government also secured congressional approval for major political reforms, forcing political parties to hold simultaneous open primaries to select their presidential candidates, banning the private financing of radio and television advertising in electoral campaigns, reducing the length of political campaigns and establishing a minimum level of membership for parties. A legal challenge against the media law, initiated by the Clarín group, had some success in October 2010, when the Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling by a lower court that, pending a final verdict on the constitutionality of the legislation, suspended the requirement that companies with more than 10 licences should sell off their excess operations within one year of the law’s enactment.

A presidential decree providing for the use of some US $6,600m. of central bank reserves to guarantee debt payments provoked significant tensions between the Government and other state institutions in early 2010. Opposition figures maintained that the use of the reserves required congressional authorization, while the refusal of the Governor of the Central Bank, Martín Redrado, to disburse the funds led to his dismissal by President Fernández on 7 January. Redrado insisted that only the legislature was empowered to remove him from office, a stance supported on the following day by a federal court judge, who reinstated Redrado to his post and suspended the decree on the proposed use of federal reserves. However, Redrado announced his resignation in late January, a few days before a specially convened congressional commission voted in support of his dismissal. Some concern was expressed that the appointment of a strong ally of Fernández, Mercedes Marcó de Pont, hitherto President of the state-owned Banco de la Nación Argentina, as Redrado’s successor could weaken the Central Bank’s autonomy. The congressional commission also recommended the continued suspension of the decree on the use of the reserves, pending the consideration of its legitimacy by the Congreso. When the Congreso returned from recess at the beginning of March, however, Fernández announced the annulment of this decree and the introduction of two new ones establishing funds to which central bank reserves would be transferred: the first, amounting to $2,190m., was destined to service debt payments to multilateral lending institutions, and the second, amounting to $4,380m., was for the repayment of private creditors. Opposition leaders vowed to challenge the new decrees, which had come into immediate effect, and in mid-April the Cámara de Diputados voted to reject the second, most contentious one. A vote on the issue was postponed in the Senado, however, where the repeated absence of senators had led to a failure to muster a quorum, thus stalling proceedings. With the decree yet to be debated, in early May the upper house adopted new legislation allowing the use of central bank reserves to service debt payments; the bill, which was sponsored by an opposition senator, Carlos Verna, purportedly in exchange for government funding for his province, La Pampa, was similar to the controversial decree, which it was intended to replace, but was not considered in the lower house, the approval of which was required. The two decrees signed in March therefore remained in force.

Héctor Timerman, ambassador to the USA, was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship in mid-June 2010, following the resignation of the incumbent Jorge Taiana, reportedly over policy differences and alleged leaks to the media regarding efforts to resolve the pulp mill dispute between Argentina and Uruguay (see Foreign Affairs). Shortly before his resignation, Taiana had authorized Eduardo Sadous, the Argentine ambassador to Venezuela in 2002–05, to testify before the congressional committee on foreign relations, which was investigating claims by Sadous that Argentine businessmen wishing to export agricultural machinery to Venezuela had been required to pay bribes to government officials; a judicial investigation into the allegations was also under way. In December the illegal occupation of land in the Parque Indoamericano, in the south of Buenos Aires, by thousands of people demanding housing and social assistance led to violence in which at least three squatters were killed. The creation of a new Ministry of Security in response to the unrest was interpreted as a rebuke to the Cabinet Chief, Aníbal Fernández, whose delay in deploying federal police to the Parque Indoamericano had allowed confrontations between the squatters and local residents to escalate. Nilda Garré, hitherto Minister of Defence, was appointed as Minister of Security, being replaced at the Ministry of Defence by Arturo Puricelli. The Parque Indoamericano was eventually cleared after the federal and city Governments agreed to fund a joint housing plan.

Meanwhile, speculation regarding the presidential election of October 2011 intensified from mid-2010. In accordance with the political reforms adopted in December 2009, mandatory primary elections to select presidential and vice-presidential candidates were not scheduled to take place until 14 August 2011. None the less, several potential candidates had emerged by early 2011. Following the sudden death in October 2010 of her husband, former President Kirchner, who had been widely expected to represent the FPV in the presidential poll, it was anticipated that President Fernández would seek re-election, although Daniel Scioli, Vice-President in Kirchner’s administration and current Governor of Buenos Aires Province, was considered to be a potential challenger. Former President Duhalde, of Peronismo Federal, had also confirmed his intention to stand for nomination. The likely contenders for the UCR candidacy were Vice-President Cobos and Ricardo Alfonsín, son of former President Raúl Alfonsín, while Elisa Carrió, the leader of the Coalición Cívica, which had withdrawn from its alliance with the UCR in August 2010, also hoped to contest the presidency again. The presidential aspirations of Mauricio Macri, the mayor of the City of Buenos Aires and leader of the PRO, appeared to have been adversely affected in July 2010, when it was confirmed that he was to be tried on four charges related to illegal phone-tapping.

Citation: Recent developments: the presidency of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (Argentina), in Europa World online. London, Routledge. Retrieved 17 May 2012 from http://www.europaworld.com/pub/entry/EE000273