CLASH WITH VENEZUELA
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich confirmed last weekend that Border Guard lance-corporal Nahuel Agustín Gallo is being held “at an intelligence unit” in Táchira on Venezuela’s border with Colombia. Gallo had arrived there to take a further flight to Caracas to join his Venezuelan wife but was immediately arrested and accused of espionage with criticisms of the Bolivarian régime on his mobile telephone held against him. Around the same time three of the half dozen Venezuelan opposition politicians trapped in the Argentine Embassy in Caracas for the last nine months held their first press conference (virtually) in that period with international media, complaining of the “psychological harassment” of a siege including snipers posted in the vicinity. Last Tuesday Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein called the situation “intolerable” as Gallo continued to be held while his colleague Security Minister Patricia Bullrich ordered Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello to “release the gendarme or heed the consequences” but President Javier Milei had the strongest words of all at a Military Academy graduation ceremony that same day, calling his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolás Maduro a “criminal dictator” while demanding the immediate release of the Catamarca-born NCO.
KUEIDER DISPUTES SENATE EXPULSION
Senator Edgardo Kueider has challenged his expulsion from the Upper House last December 12 due to various irregularities, citing President Javier Milei as one of the witnesses in his defence. Milei had said from Italy last weekend that since Vice-President Victoria Villarruel was the acting president in charge of the Executive Branch in his absence, she could not participate in any activities of the Legislative Branch, including the session to expel Kueider. On Tuesday, San Isidro federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado requested the extraditions of both Kueider and his secretary Iara Guinsel Costa from Paraguay to face charges from their attempt to smuggle US$211,000 into that neighbouring country early this month, including embezzlement, malfeasance and money-laundering.
CRISTINA FACES TRIAL
The Supreme Court last Tuesday turned down an extraordinary appeal presented by ex-president Cristina Kirchner and other persons indicted in the Hotesur and Los Sauces cases, thus confirming last year’s ruling overturning their 2021 acquittal and ordering their trial on charges of money-laundering, illicit association and graft. Tuesday’s ruling signed by all four justices rejected the appeal on the grounds that there was no final sentence nor any federal issue which might justify their intervention while no objections about procedural guarantees could be lodged ahead of the trial. “A rebuttal of each and every one of the arguments on which the charges were based” would be needed to head off the trial and was lacking in the appeal, the Supreme Court concluded.
PATO DOES DISNEY
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich confirmed that she will be vacationing in Disneyland this summer with her twin grandsons despite the presidential call for “austerity” in the choice of holiday destinations. Bullrich obtained the green light to be the exception proving the rule following conversations with both the Milei siblings, arguing that her promise to her grandsons to take them to Disneyland if they did well at school was more sacred than her government commitments. Milei had previously told his Cabinet ministers to avoid vacationing in Punta del Este, the United States and Europe at least in the first summer of an administration which had kicked off with the slogan “No hay plata” (“there’s no money”).
STRIKE THAT NEVER WAS
Wednesday traffic was due to be crippled by a 24-hour train-drivers’ strike to press pay grievances but the government intervened by ordering compulsory conciliation, thus heading it off for the next fortnight. Train-drivers are paid a monthly 1.2-1.4 million pesos on average, which their La Fraternidad trade union calculates to be a 46 percent loss of real wages in the course of this year.
CEPAL TIPS GROWTH
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (Cepal in its Spanish acronym), which has revised this year’s regional growth upwards from 1.8 to 2.2 percent this year and rising further to 2.4 percent next year, views Argentina as an exception with an economic contraction of 3.2 percent this year but growing 4.3 percent in 2025. Nevertheless, it warns that this growth will be uneven as pensions and public sector pay continue to lag while real wages in the private sector are recovering rapidly.
SANTIAGO PROTEST
Chile last Wednesday delivered a note of protest to the Argentine Embassy in Santiago complaining that Economy Minister Luis Caputo had affirmed that its President Gabriel Boric was “a Communist out to sink [his country]” during a radio interview. President Javier Milei has criticised Chile’s leftist government often enough in the past 18 months, describing it as an “impoverishing socialism.”
MILEIS FAST-TRACKED
President Javier Milei received express Italian citizenship on a weekend visit to Rome to join Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the annual festival of her party Fratelli d’Italia, where he defended his shock policies while defining himself as “an economist, not a politician” to fervent applause. Presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei was also granted Italian citizenship. Both siblings qualify by virtue of their Italian ancestry but one opposition deputy described their fast track to nationality as an “insult” since foreigners need 10 years’ residence before requesting citizenship while their Italian-born children have to wait until they are 18.
EVES ALSO HOLIDAYS
Both Christmas and New Year’s Eve will be holidays for public administration workers, as has invariably been the custom, but this year it was not an automatic decision with the issue hotly debated in government circles by advocates of limiting days off to Christmas and New Year’s Day. In Buenos Aires Province the Fegeppba trade union federation tried to push it one further by requesting that the Monday bridge days (December 23 and 30) be holidays as well but provincial Government (Interior) Minister Carlos Bianco turned them down.
FORCED PRISON LABOUR
Forced labour will return to federal prisons in the form of up to five hours of unpaid work a day to maintain and clean the cells, jail blocks and yards, according to Resolution 1346/2024 published last Wednesday in the Official Gazette with the signature of Security Minister Patricia Bullrich. The new norm will apply to some 12,000 penitentiary inmates, irrespective of whether they are in fact convicts and of the severity of their crimes. The new norm will apply to some 12,000 penitentiary inmates, irrespective of whether they are in fact convicts and of the severity of their crimes. Penitentiary Undersecretary Julián Curi commented that such work would be a form of rehabilitation, implying that idle hands are the devil’s workshop, and that being responsible for the repairs might give the prisoners pause when contemplating destructive prison riots. Around a third of prisoners are currently engaged in paid work in areas ranging from carpentry to agriculture.
ALBERTO ON HOLD
Originally summoned for December 11 to testify in the cases of the gender violence charges lodged by his ex-partner Fabiola Yáñez, ex-president Alberto Fernández managed to obtain an indefinite suspension of the summons following one postponement after another. The latest of three postponements had been for Boxing Day but Fernández managed to put off any summons until some time next year by persistently challenging federal judge Julián Ercolini as “partial” as well as denying all charges.
NEW IMF TALKS
Argentina is seeking a new programme with the International Monetary Fund to succeed its current US$44-billion deal, the multilateral lender’s chief Spokeswoman Julie Kozack confirmed Thursday. Heaping praise on the government for its reforms, she said the “authorities have formally expressed interest in moving to a new programme and negotiations are now underway.”
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