LABOUR REFORM CLEARS SENATE
The government’s “labour modernisation” bill was given a comfortable passage through the upper half of Congress in midweek by a 42-30 margin with all 72 senators voting but incorporating numerous amendments, including retention of compulsory union dues deducted from wages (but now with a two percent ceiling). The “fiscal chapter” irking provincial governors by cutting their revenues disappeared. CGT trade unionist and leftist demonstrators protested outside Congress on Wednesday (the former peacefully) with violent episodes quickly curbed. There were over 50 arrests with the police deploying water cannon and tear gas.
INFLATION EITHER SIDE OF 3%
This week presented an opportunity to compare the old and newer methods of measuring inflation underlying INDEC national statistics bureau chief Marco Lavagna’s exit early this month when City Hall and INDEC statisticians presented their figures for January on successive days – the former (using the newer method) 3.1 percent on Monday and the latter (preserving the old) 2.9 percent on Tuesday with an annual rate of 32.4 percent. Although only fractionally up on December’s 2.8 percent, the INDEC figure represented an acceleration of inflation for the fifth month running and was well ahead of expectations closer to two percent than three posted by most economists. Much of last month’s inflation was due to seasonal factors as emerging from the two main culprits – food and beverages (4.7 percent, in large measure due to fruit and vegetables) and restaurants and hotels (4.1 percent in a summer holiday month) while there was deflation in garments and footwear (-0.5 percent). Core inflation (excluding regulated and seasonal prices) was 2.6 percent. In the City Hall data services (3.5 percent as against 2.3 percent for goods) took the general figure over three percent with core inflation of 2.2 percent – the leading culprits were Food and beverages and Insurance and financial services with four percent each, followed by Transport (3.7 percent). Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal published an article deploring the postponement of the updated methodology as a blow to confidence evoking Kirchnerism, also pointing out how much of the economy is index- linked.
ANDIS GOES TO TRIAL
Federal judge Sebastián Casanello sent Diego Spagnuolo, the former head of the now dissolved ANDIS (Agencia Nacional de Discapacidad) national disability agency, to trial last Monday on charges including graft and defrauding the state alongside 18 other defendants, among them Daniel Garbellini (Spagnuolo’s second-in-command), Miguel Ángel Calvete and Pablo Atchabahian. Casanello did not rule out further defendants ranking higher up in the government also entering the dock for the racket (which consisted of overpriced drug purchases for the disabled) since “its scale, the importance of the sums and a certain nonchalance suggest … that there could be another level of complicity.”
TRANSPARENCY SLIPPAGE
Argentina dropped five places in the world rankings of Transparency International released last Monday, falling from 104th to 99th place with a percentage of 36 against a world average of 42 percent. Argentina is thus on a par with Ukraine for corruption among the 182 nations covered by the survey, trailing several African countries. Top marks went to Denmark (89 points), Finland (88) and Singapore (84) while Venezuela was penultimate with 10.
JUVENILE DELINQUENCY, TAKE TWO
The government sent its bill lowering the age of criminal responsibility to 13 to Congress last Monday but withdrew it the next day and worked out a new draft, based on a new consensus age of 14, approved by the lower house voting 149-100 in favour on Thursday. The bill leaves the Cabinet chief free to adjust its funding accordingly, safeguarding it from the presidential vetoes slapped on some bills last year on the grounds that they were not self-financing. Both this bill and the Mercosur-European Union free trade agreement were scheduled for Thursday debate in Congress.
POLICE UNREST IN ROSARIO
A group of Santa Fe provincial policemen staged a pay protest in Rosario early last Tuesday and ended up confronting their own colleagues heeding City Hall orders to quell the mutiny. The provincial government denied reports that the mutinous policemen had confined themselves to barracks, attributing the protest mainly to ex-officers purged by Radical Governor Maximiliano Pullaro. There were also protests elsewhere in the province, including its capital with some arrests. A monthly pay floor of 1.35 million pesos announced by Pullaro last Wednesday served to calm the unrest.
JUSTICE IN CHACO
A Chaco court last Tuesday confirmed life sentences for the Sena clan for the femicide of Cecilia Strzyzowski (aged 28) in mid-2023 with the victim’s husband, César Sena, singled out as the author of the crime while his parents, picket leader Emerenciano Sena and Marcela Acuña, were convicted as necessary accomplices. Three other defendants were handed prison sentences ranging between 34 and 60 months for covering up the crime. The femicide was a prime factor in leading to the defeat of three-term Peronist governor Jorge Capitanich (now a senator) three months later.
CAPITANICH EX DIES
Sandra Mendoza (62), a former two-term Peronist deputy and ex-wife of Senator Jorge Capitanich, died last Wednesday from complications resulting from her condition of being diabetic. Chaco-born Mendoza was married to the three-term governor for almost two decades between 1990 and 2009, giving birth to two daughters Guillermina and Jorgelina – during that period she was often called the “co-governor” in Chaco, rising to be provincial health minister. But theirs was a stormy marriage making for several media splashes – on one occasion she deliberately rammed her car into her husband’s in a parking-lot, smashing it up. During Wednesday’s session to approve the labour reform bill, all senators observed a minute of silence in her memory while ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner paid tribute to her as “a great comrade, Peronist militant and warrior of life.”
CRISTINA FACING EVICTION?
Prosecutors Diego Luciani and Sergio Mola last Thursday asked the TOF (Tribunal Oral Federal) 2 court to confíscate 141 properties belonging to ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and her crony capitalist Lázaro Báez, including the Constitución neighbourhood flat at San José 1111 where she is now serving her prison sentence under house arrest. Between them they are required to deposit 684,990,950,139.86 pesos for defrauding the state although they have yet to deposit a peso, the prosecutors complained. Báez accounts for 128 of the 141 properties. The Supreme Court is in charge of confiscating and auctioning the properties in question.
PUBLIC TV UNDER FIRE
Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni last weekend aimed his fire at Televisión Pública, saying that while the government was legally barred from privatising it, they could close it down but for now would content themselves with changing its name (which sounded “Kirchnerite” to his ear) while “streamlining it as much as possible.” The plan is to reduce its current “excessive” payroll of 1,300 employees by approximately 20 percent while salaries have been practically frozen for the last 18 months, placing many below the poverty line. The channel is under trusteeship until next February.
LEO XIV INVITED
While on a visit to Italy, Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno last Wednesday invited Pope Leo XIV to visit Argentina in the form of delivering him a letter signed by President Javier Milei. The Pope, who speaks fluent Spanish after working almost four decades in Peru, is planning a trip to this region late this year. He has already met Milei last year. The last papal visit to Argentina was by John Paul II close to the Easter of 1987.
OLIVOS SUICIDE EXPLAINED?
Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva last Monday held a press conference to attribute the mysterious suicide of Olivos presidential residence bodyguard Rodrigo Gómez in mid-December to extorsion by seven convicts in Magdalena prison conning him via a dating app into thinking that he was in contact with one “Julieta Ayelén Cardozo.” Cabinet Chief Manuel Adorni flanking the minister at the press conference concluded: “Mobile telephones are effectively like permitting guns in a cell and that can no longer be allowed,” a conclusion echoed by federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado sitting on the minister’s left.
RIQUELME RAPPED FOR FRAUD
Juan Román Riquelme, the president of Boca Juniors football club, was denounced by the Security Ministry last Tuesday on criminal charges of fraudulent administration. Security Ministry official Walter Klix, close to previous minister Patricia Bullrich and who had already pressed similar charges last May, assured that he could prove that Riquelme was running a “black market” and “a mafia setup” whereby “admission tickets were manipulated and distributed,” also revealing that he had “over 100 witnesses” backed up by chats and videos. The presumed irregularities also included the disappearance of 50,000 sport kits.
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