MALVINAS MIFF
President Javier Milei gave an unexpected twist to his Veteran's Day speech in Plaza San Martín last Wednesday when he introduced the Malvinas islanders’ right to self-determination (the prime British argument) into the issue, maintaining that the islanders could be lured into voluntary entry into Argentina if transformed into a prosperous country to be truly sovereign, also urging more defence spending. Marking the 43rd anniversary of the outbreak of the 1982 South Atlantic war down in Tierra del Fuego, Vice-President Victoria Villarruel took up an unambiguously nationalistic stance.
CANDIDATES GALORE
The registration of the candidates for 30 City Legislature seats in the May 18 local elections closed last weekend with three main lists in contention, in all cases challenged by ex-allies or splinters among a total of 16 lists. PRO centre-right party currently ruling City Hall under Mayor Jorge Macri is fielding a list headed by national deputy Silvia Lospennato but both former two-term mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and ex-partners in the Juntos por el Cambio coalition – Evolución (Radicals) and Coalición Cívica – are competing for her votes. La Libertad Avanza (LLA), ruling at national level, has presented a list topped by presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni but the libertarian vote is also chased by the expelled 2023 LLA mayoral candidate Ramiro Marra (running for the UCeDé) and national coalition partners MID. Not to mention the Unión Porteña Libertaria headed by Leandro Santoro, deliberately chosen to confuse voters (along with the ‘UP’ initials shared by Unión por la Patria) with Radical-turned-Kirchnerite Leandro Santoro (the 2023 Frente de Todos mayoral candidate) spearheading the mainstream Peronist challenge, now rebranded Ahora Buenos Aires. Santoro is also challenged from within Peronism by former Cabinet Chief Juan Manuel Abal Medina (Seamos Libres) and Alejandro Kim, a lawyer of Korean origin running for Guillermo Moreno’s Principios y Valores. The main Frente de Izquierda list is headed by its 2023 mayoral candidate Vanina Biassi, a fierce critic of Israel, while two other leftist lists, the neo-Nazi César Biondini and Remedios para CABA round out the field.
CRISTINA’S CHALLENGE
Ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who currently chairs the Peronist Partido Justicialista, on Monday took her case up to the Supreme Court after the Cassation Court rejected her appeal against a corruption conviction, claiming that her constitutional rights were being violated in the face of a “manifestly arbitrary sentence.” She also challenged Manuel García-Mansilla’s right to be sitting in the Supreme Court by virtue of an “unconstitutional” presidential decree, anticipating that his appointment would be facing a hostile Senate session on Thursday.
NEW LEGAL BEAGLE
The government announced last Tuesday afternoon the resignation of the Legal & Technical Secretary Dante Herrera Bravo, “for personal reasons,” to be replaced by lawyer María Ibarzabal Murphy, 39, previously the Strategic Planning secretary (now merged with her new post) and close to star presidential spin doctor Santiago Caputo who has worked in drafting previous government legislation. The change was also endorsed by Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei. Herrera Bravo had already lost his undersecretary Sergio Iacovino last Saturday when he registered as a PRO centre-right candidate for the City legislature.
‘SIGNIFICANT’ AID
In a week when the upcoming agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) basically remained in limbo, President Javier Milei received World Bank chief Ajay Banga in Government House last Wednesday but did not obtain much more from him than a pledge of “significant” financial assistance “in the short term to support reforms, attract prívate investment and set the bases for job creation to create international confidence in Argentina." Banga also congratulated Milei on "the important progress achieved in so short a time.”
NO CRIME
Federal Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti last Monday decided to shelve the case lodged by Radical deputy Facundo Manes against star presidential advisor Santiago Caputo for his aggressive behaviour at the opening of the ordinary sessions of Congress on March 1, defining it as “a political dispute” falling short of a crime and corresponding to the jurisdiction of internal parliamentary regulations. Caputo had yelled threats at Manes while tapping his chest in the Congress corridor for interrupting President Javier Milei’s state-of-the-nation speech by waving a copy of the Constitution.
CHAINSAW SLASHER
The fallout of last year’s austerity also cost the social security system almost 450,000 contributors in 2024 (449,203, to be exact, falling from 13,097,626 to 12,648,423), its authorities reported last Tuesday, although the government claims recovery is underway this year. Over three-quarters of this total (76.9 percent) is salaried while the informally employed are estimated at around 7.5 million out of a workforce of about 20 million. Despite the overall decline, women in domestic service rose slightly (from 355.722 to 366.204).
AEROLÍNEAS IN THE BLACK
An Aerolíneas Argentinas report to the Economy Ministry posted positive numbers for the first time since the airline’s nationalisation in 2008 with a surplus of 156 billion pesos and a pre-tax profit of US$20.7 million. The turnaround was achieved by reducing staff by 15 percent among other cost-cutting measures designed to leave the company in shape for privatisation. Since 2008, Aerolíneas Argentinas had averaged an annual loss of around US$400 million.
SHARING NAZI INFO
Defence Minister Luis Petri said on Tuesday that the declassified archives on Nazi war criminals in Argentina during the first decade after World War II would be shared with the United States. Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos has recently revealed that the declassification of the documents (announced on Memory Day last month) stemmed from a Casa Rosada audience granted by President Javier Milei to authorities of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who delivered a letter from Senator Charles Grassley (Republican-Iowa), 91, who sits on the US Senate Judicial Committee, asking Argentina to collaborate with their investigations (the letter was also copied to US President Donald Trump). Petri said that the “movement of funds” would be an important aspect of the investigation with suspicions that the Fabricaciones Militares munitions plants may have contracted fleeing Nazis between 1945 and 1950 while the Credit Suisse bank is also presumed to have assisted Nazis. Around 5,000 Nazis are believed to have passed through Argentina between 1945 and 1955, including such emblematic names as Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Erich Priebke, Gestapo officer Walter Kutschmann and Eduard Roschmann (“the butcher of Riga”) although only Kutschmann actually died here in prison.
PENSION PROTESTS REVISITED
Good news and bad news from the weekly pension protest marches outside Congress. Pablo Grillo, the news photographer whose skull was crushed by a flying tear gas grenade during the March 12 protest, is walking and talking and generally recovering well after nearly three weeks in critical condition. But last Tuesday federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano called in policeman Cristian Rivaldi for questioning about the tear gas injuries to the small girl Fabrizia Pegoraro in the September 11 version of the pension protest last year. On Thursday, the international organisation Human Rights Watch called for an investigation of police brutality at the March 12 protest, also criticising the anti-picket protocol installed by Security Minister Patricia Bullrich. While admitting to violence from hooligan elements joining the demonstration, Human Rights Watch insisted that the police reaction was disproportionate and dangerous with an indiscriminate use of force and mass arrests.
‘CRYPTOGATE’ FESTERS
Mauricio Novelli, who served as the link between President Javier Milei and the creators of the controversial ‘$LIBRA’ cryptocurrency, has visited the Casa Rosada and Olivos presidential residence at least 10 times with one meeting lasting over six hours, a report in the Tuesday edition of Clarín newspaper revealed. The boom and bust of the memecoin within a few hours of the evening of February 14 following Milei’s promotion (“diffusion” in his words) is the centre of a scandal prompting court charges of fraud and legal investigations reaching beyond Argentina to the United States and Europe.
RUSSIAN ‘SECT’ BUSTED
Russian ex-soldier Konstantin Rudnev and 11 female companions were arrested in Bariloche last Tuesday, accused of running a sect which served as a front for human-trafficking with white slavery suspected. The sect purported to give courses in meditation and yoga, for which US$5,000 per person was charged. Prosecutor Fernando Arrigo has called for the detained to be remanded in custody. This mostly Russian mafia also has Mexican and Brazilian members.
SWEETENING VIDELA
Juan Sancho Vilarullo, headmaster of the traditional school Dámaso Centeno, stirred up controversy last week when he marked Memory Day by posting on his WhatsApp a photo of a Jorgito alfajor carrying the face of a winking Jorge Rafael Videla (junta head between 1976 and 1981) with the caption: “En este 24 de marzo, para tu amigo ‘zurdito’ (for your lefty friend), alfajor ‘Jorgito’”.
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