Messi in Dallas, messy down here

What memories of this year’s last full week of June will stay greenest in the future – the green of the turf underlying Lionel Messi’s record-breaking World Cup goals last Monday or the green of the banknotes rustling in Jesica Cirio’s wardrobe? Will the filming of ‘Leo Does Dallas’ or Jesica Cirio’s videos be the dominant visual record? And what image of Argentina from its football will prevail in the outside world from the date of June 22 – Messi’s history-making goals this week or Diego Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ exactly four decades previously? Or will all of the above end up being eclipsed by the ‘Super RIGI’ bill to attract hi-tech mega-investments approved in Congress in midweek as the great game-changer?

Leaving the latter to the future and birthday boy Messi to elsewhere in this newspaper, this editorial will focus on the latest chapter of the Peronist politician Martín Insaurralde’s ill-gotten gains. The separation of powers is alive and well in Argentina when it comes to corruption – regardless of whether the issue is Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni’s assets or the up to US$20 million stacked in the San Vicente mansion, the knee-jerk response of the political world is: “The matter belongs to the courts.” A conspiracy of silence spanning almost the entire political world – one might imagine the Javier Milei national government jumping on this scandal to take some of the heat off Adorni, placing in perspective the relatively petty sums sending him to the doghouse, or the Buenos Aires provincial opposition seeking to drive a wedge into Peronist domination of the nation’s most populous district but no. This invites suspicions that rather than being a black sheep, Insaurralde is a relatively standard specimen of the political class only coming to light due to his excessive ostentation in flaunting his wealth.   

Ultimately responsible is Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof rather than Milei since all of Insaurralde’s greenbacks accrued from gambling, bingo hall and real-estate deals at provincial level in Greater Buenos Aires. No evidence of personal corruption has emerged about Kicillof – perhaps as significant a credential for a presidential candidacy as his hugely important post – and Insaurralde’s vulgar exhibitionism would be totally out of character for him. Yet whether out of denialism or because he cannot fit kickbacks into his Excel projections, Kicillof has consistently turned a blind eye to previous notorious scandals such as Julio ‘Chocolate’ Rigau (the bagman for cashing the paycheques of dozens of ghost legislative employees), washing his hands in the manner of Pontius Pilate like almost every other politician.

This political conspiracy of silence is accompanied by a cone of silence when it comes to the judicial branch. Public opinion demands one pace of clarification and court procedure quite another – so sluggish that it is tantamount to granting impunity to corruption rather than fighting it with putting cases into a coma a specialised art for many judges and lawyers. The latest scandals serve to bury the previous – Messi’s brilliant goals have eclipsed the AFA Argentine Football Association corruption so much in the public eye earlier this year to such a degree that AFA president Claudio ‘Chiqui’ Tapia could crash the superstar’s 39th birthday party without anybody eyeing him askance. Such technicolour scandals as seem almost natural for Jesica Cirio can even serve the purposes of the crooked by distracting attention from a deeper corruption with substrata persisting long beyond Insaurralde’s departure from office.

Yet taking the political class and the judiciary to task for their indifference is not enough – also in order is some civic self-criticism for the apathy of a public eye currently dazzled by Messi’s goals. What is the reaction of the citizenry to this flagrant corruption – a massive shrug of resignation or will there be an insistence on an ethical imperative translating itself into electoral consequences? Having given the country a master class in the importance of fiscal surpluses, President Milei needs to lend a minimal sincerity to his state-of-the-nation speech announcement of morality as a state policy while judges have much to explain for their lack of response to corruption but this does not give the citizenry the right to kick the problem upstairs.

Yet who knows if tech tycoon Peter Thiel will not end up having the last word on the historical significance of this week with Congress passage of the ‘Super RIGI’ bill rather than Messi’s goal fest or Insaurralde’s song of sixpence?