Buenos aires

Qantas announces historic non-stop repatriation flight from Buenos Aires

The 18-hour flight to Darwin will focus on masks, PPE and social distancing rather than premium services.

Australian airline Qantas is planning a historic non-stop repatriation flight from Buenos Aires Ezeiza Airport across the South Pole aboard a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, it has been announced.

The reason for choosing Darwin and not Sydney. Melbourne or any other major city in the country is that the Australian government has a facility there for passengers to observe a mandatory 14-day supervised quarantine.

The aircraft chosen for the operation could accommodate up to 236 passengers.

The distance between Buenos Aires and Darwin is 14,683 kilometers (9,124 miles), which implies a record for the Australian company in flights operated with Boeing 787. Currently, its longest route with these planes is Perth – London Heathrow, just over 9,000 miles.

Flight QF 014 is scheduled to depart Buenos Aires (EZE) at 12:25 p.m. on October 5 and arrive in Darwin (DRW) at 6:45 p.m. local time the next day.

Darwin International Airport is the busiest in the Northern Territory and 10th in Australia. It is the only aerial station in the city. The airport is located in the northern suburb of Darwin, 8 km from the city center, in Eaton.

In October 2019, Qantas flew from Sydney to New York, a historic event for commercial aviation that connected the two cities non-stop for the first time. The flight duration was 19 hours and 16 minutes. In November of the same year, a special flight between London and Sydney also took place.

While 9,124 miles is not in itself a feat for a long-haul specialist like Qantas, the operation between Buenos Aires and Darwin will remain an important event, in terms of distance, flight time and connection for the first. and probably the only time. time between the two cities.

The flight is one of a series of repatriation services on behalf of the Australian government. Qantas recently stepped up the pace of those flights, saying it will perform 90 repatriation flights in 90 days. The flight from Buenos Aires is one of them.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), which organizes and underwrites repatriation flights, has announced that more than 55,000 Australians have returned since the start of the pandemic, including more than 26,800 people on around 180 flights from government-facilitated repatriation like this, which will bring passengers to the large government quarantine camp just outside the city in northern Australia.

Qantas has made two attempts to operate scheduled flights to Buenos Aires. Qantas first flew there between 1998 and 2002 and again in 2008 via Auckland. Qantas ended these flights in 2012 when it moved its South American port to Santiago. At the time, Qantas argued that Santiago made a more strategic sense. But due to COVID-19, Qantas has not flown to Santiago since March 2020 and there is still no confirmed date to resume service.

The departure from Qantas has left Aerolineas Argentinas the only airline to operate non-stop flights between Sydney and Buenos Aires. But Aerolineas Argentinas abandoned the route in 2014. Aerolineas Argentinas had been flying between the two cities for years. However, the airline only went non-stop in 2012, hoping to benefit from Qantas’ exit.

Regardless, the 18-hour flight to Darwin will focus on masks, PPE and social distancing rather than premium services.

Qantas has made COVID-19 vaccination mandatory by November 15 for people in contact with passengers and by the end of March 2022 for administrative staff. The company plans to resume flights to countries with high vaccination rates such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Japan, Singapore and Fiji as soon as possible.

Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner presented an affidavit to the Anti-Corruption Office (OA) declaring a total fortune of 16,463,095 pesos, mainly composed of the inheritance received from her late husband and presidential predecessor Néstor Kirchner .

But the lion’s share of the family fortune was declared by his son Máximo, who heads both the Frente de Todos caucus in Congress and the militant group La Cámpora – some 400 million pesos last year, an increase of 37% compared to 2019 (approximately the last annual inflation rate), thus giving rise to the right to wealth tax, the floor of which is half of this value.

The heir of the family declared the same amount of 2,848,072 USD in two term deposit accounts as in previous years, but the value in pesos increased by about 69 million to 239,095,683 pesos. The inheritance left by his father and donated by his mother also included 27 properties.

Fernández de Kirchner’s statement (actually presented last Saturday but posted on the OA website on Monday) reveals a 69% increase from the 9,761,186 pesos reported last year. After accounting for inflation, the real increase was 24.2 percent.

Most of the assets consisted of “property rights in this country” (i.e. property transferred to a third party other than the owner) from the inheritance of ex-President Néstor Kirchner – a total of 12 131,852 pesos.

The property of the ex-president, who died in 2010, was divided in half for his widow and the other half for his two children, Máximo and Florencia.

The Vice President also declared 441,335 pesos of personal effects, not counting any vehicles since she always uses cars from the Senate fleet.

Fernández de Kirchner also reported 3,679,029 pesos in cash deposited in two savings accounts at the end of 2020 and salary arrears totaling 210,879 pesos.

The former president, who ruled Argentina from 2007 to 2015, has not declared any ownership or shares in the company since all of these assets were given to her children in 2016 before legal proceedings against her, some of which involving the hotel agencies of the Hotesur Patagonian family.

Family businesses are currently under trusteeship in money laundering investigations which have led to the vice president now awaiting trial.

Since 2010, Fernández de Kirchner received the pension corresponding to a presidential widow and since 2015 that of a former president. However, following the change of government, the Department of Social Development told her to choose between one or the other and when she refused, they eventually suspended the widow’s pension, which the ex-president said. appealed to court. At the end of 2019, when she became vice-president, the courts upheld her appeal and overturned the suspension of her right to receive both pensions.

Other details of Máximo Kirchner’s statement include shares in family hotels in the amount of 10,151,867 pesos to Hotesur SA and 6,667,337 pesos to Los Sauces SA, as well as 1,148,511 pesos owed by the latter. His net worth in national currency is 12,838,079 and he also owns two vehicles valued at 1,237,500 pesos.

Young Kirchner reported his personal expenses last year at 1,299,007 pesos, a monthly average of 108,300 pesos.

– SCHEDULES / NA

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With so many voices cast by the various media throughout this momentous week and with so much in the air following the midweek Cabinet crisis (at least at the time of writing), this column is found simultaneously with nothing and everything to write. Make the best approach to retreat to the usual comfort zone of that space – relating the present to the past based on a Herald of Buenos Aires newsroom experience dating back to the very first elections of the current democratic period in 1983.

But in my personal case and in an electoral context which goes back even further – from 1977 to 1979, I was part of a European university team which worked on a uniform electoral system for the first direct elections of the European Parliament of the last one. year. Still none, so not too much of a bragging claim, but it has given me vast experience in things like the D’Hondt electoral system adopted by Argentina – so much so that I can actually spell that name correctly, unlike almost everyone here (D’Hont is almost universal local use). Victor D’Hondt (1841-1901) was a Ghent jurist and mathematician who devised the method of successive division of proportional representation used to allocate seats – since this method is misunderstood almost as often as the name of its Belgian creator is misspelled, this column could explain it a bit further down if space allows.

But for now on more immediate and central issues. Let’s start this week with its start with the PASO primary vote last Sunday. The ruling coalition crisis that has occurred now makes this already seem like old news, so let me condense all the myriads of votes into a single 70 percent that basically tells the story – 70 percent have voted against the government, 70 percent voted for the two main coalitions (as against nearly 80 percent in PASO 2019 and almost 90 percent in the actual presidential vote) and the turnout in the central battlefield of the province of Buenos Aires was 70 percent (well, okay, 69.3 percent and 66.2 percent nationally).

Almost the mirror image of the PASO 2019 primaries with the common denominator of a heavy anti-government oscillation confusing the anticipated expectations of close competition. Ahead of the vote, a cryptic electorate offered little clue as to whether all of the calamities and mistakes of the past 18 months would result in a massive protest vote or disenchanted abstention, but the former largely prevailed. At the time, the government may have had reason to hope those ballots were catharsis that could be reversed in November, but the ongoing autistic power games only fuel anger against a dysfunctional coalition. .

Little light at the end of this tunnel but rather than speculating on an uncertain future, let’s see what exit strategies the past can offer. For the more obvious (especially for any populist government), we don’t need to look any further than the penultimate PASO primary of 2017 in San Luis when the Rodríguez Saá clan turned a loss of almost 20 points. in a triumph with the comfortable margin of 12%. halfway through the simple expedient of throwing money and everything except the kitchen sink (including even the kitchen sink, since appliances were widely distributed) to the electorate. Even though replicating this formula nationwide would cost around 90 times that cost, it immediately occurred to many Kirchnerite minds and indeed, early last week, the announcement of a package of Election giveaways (including a resumption of IFE emergency documents from last year) was scheduled for Thursday. But massive midweek resignations, including heads of social security services in charge of many of the potential benefits, have delayed all this (at least at the time of writing) – on that front, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would appear to be his own worst enemy.

Another reference to the recent past seems to have been a main catalyst for the Cabinet crisis – the head of La Cámpora and provincial minister of Buenos Aires, Andrés’Cuervo‘Larroque pointed out that the last two mid-term defeats of a Kirchnérite government in 2009 and 2013 were countered by changing the chief of staff and the minister of the economy in both cases. What he failed to mention was that the 2011 landslide was more the result of a vote of sympathy over the death of Néstor Kirchner the previous year than of having Aníbal Fernández (suddenly returning under the projectors) as chief of staff or Amado Boudou as Minister of the Economy. when the 2015 presidential election was in fact lost. What he also omitted was the deciding factor of strong dissident Peronist lists in previous defeats as last Sunday’s debacle was suffered by a supposedly invincible united Peronism (unheard of since 1983), thus rendering it unheard of. all the more shattering.

Larroque’s suggestion was most likely inspired by his current boss, Axel Kicillof, who became the economy czar in the latter case in 2013 and who kept the crisis largely asymptomatic through capital controls and devaluation. major, but these methods would hardly work now – how can monthly dollar purchases be less than $ 200 ($ 2,000 was the cap in 2013)? There is no room for devaluation with annual inflation already around 50% as a result of printing billions of dollars in money against the pandemic and the tax burden also cannot be increased by realistically in a society with more people below the poverty line than ever before.

Not that there is anything new about the economic mega-crises or the changes of ministers in Argentina. There were no less than six ministers of the economy in the hyperinflationary year 1989 and four at the other end of convertibility in 2001, while the current presidency theoretically still has 27 months to run. Rather than a cabinet reshuffle, President Alberto Fernández needs a coalition reshuffle if institutions are to be preserved.

More room to go into the explanations of successive divisions while leaving readers unaware of what is happening or what will happen – but at least they can now spell “D’Hondt” correctly.

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Pfizer and BioNTech said Monday that trial results showed their coronavirus vaccine was safe and produced a robust immune response in children aged five to 11, adding that they would seek regulatory approval shortly.

The vaccine would be given at a lower dose than for people over 12, they said.

“In participants aged five to 11, the vaccine was safe, well tolerated and showed strong neutralizing antibody responses,” US giant Pfizer and its German partner said in a joint statement.

They plan to submit their data to regulators in the European Union, United States and around the world “as soon as possible.”

Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health and one of the leading experts on Covid in the United States, called this “good news” that many parents have been waiting for.

If all goes well and approval ensues, “My nine year old will have a chance by Halloween!” He tweeted.

The results of the trial are the first of its kind for children under 12, with a Moderna trial for children aged 6 to 11 still ongoing.

Pfizer and Moderna injections are already given to adolescents over 12 years of age in several countries, as well as adults around the world.

England, Scotland and Wales have become the latest to join the list of nations immunizing young adolescents, rolling out vaccines for 12 to 15 year olds this week. Northern Ireland is expected to follow suit next month.

Delta is worried

Although children are considered less at risk of severe Covid, there are fears that the highly contagious Delta variant could lead to more serious cases.

Inoculating children is also seen as essential to keeping schools open and helping end the pandemic.

“We look forward to extending the protection offered by the vaccine to this younger population,” said Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer, noting that “since July, pediatric cases of Covid-19 have increased by around 240% in United States”.

Children in the 5 to 11-year-old age group were given a two-dose regimen of 10 micrograms in the trial, compared to 30 micrograms for the older age groups, the companies said. The beatings were delivered 21 days apart.

The 10 microgram dose was “carefully chosen as the preferred dose for safety, tolerability and immunogenicity” for this age group, the statement said.

The side effects were “generally comparable to those seen in participants aged 16 to 25,” he added.

Some of the most common side effects reported in the past include pain and swelling at the injection site, as well as headache, chills and fever.

The Pfizer-BioNTech statement made no mention of the rare side effect of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that has been linked to the vaccine, primarily in young men.

Less than five years before the end of the year

The Pfizer vaccine received full formal approval in the United States in August and is therefore technically available to young children if prescribed by a doctor, but U.S. officials have warned against doing so until the safety data are available.

The US regulator, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), said in a statement earlier this month that it would “carefully” review emergency clearance requests for vaccines for those under the age of 12, a process that should take “weeks rather than months”.

Israel has already given special permission to vaccinate children aged five to 11 who “are at significant risk of serious illness or death” from Covid, using the Pfizer vaccine at the lowest dose.

Pfizer and BioNTech are also testing their vaccine on infants aged six months to two years and children aged two to five years.

The first results of these tests are expected “as early as” the fourth quarter of this year, the companies said.

In total, up to 4,500 children aged six months to 11 years have enrolled in the Pfizer-BioNTech trials in the United States, Finland, Poland and Spain.

Like its rival Moderna, the Pfizer jab is based on new mRNA technology that delivers genetic instructions to cells to build the coronavirus spike protein, in order to evoke antibodies when bodies encounter the real virus.

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by Michelle Fitzpatrick, AFP

Local Jewish leaders rant over repeated security breaches at a large Jewish cemetery in the Buenos Aires area.

Just before Yom Kippur last week, three vandals were caught trying to escape with 223 of the graveyard headstones – the third such robbery in the past month. More than 100 tombstones were smashed at the Tablada cemetery the previous week.

One of last week’s vandals was caught while two others escaped. An investigation is underway.

“We are very concerned about the lack of action by the Argentine authorities to protect the Jewish cemetery,” Eliahu Hamra, secretary general of the BUR, the Orthodox bloc that heads the Jewish group AMIA, told the Jewish Telegraph Agency.

No anti-Semitic graffiti was found in the cemetery after the repeated incidents, but Jewish groups have sounded the alarm anyway. They also praised the cemetery workers, who intervened to stop the theft without police assistance.

“We expect the authorities to provide a definitive solution to the problem of insecurity and lack of protection, we need the necessary measures to be taken urgently. There appears to be a ‘free zone’, ”AMIA President Ariel Eichbaum told JTA.

According to AMIA, Tablada Cemetery is the largest Jewish cemetery in Latin America. Inaugurated in 1936, it covers nearly 100 hectares and contains more than 130,000 graves. It is located 21 km east of Buenos Aires.

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The moves in Argentina on Friday night to replace the chief of staff and other ministerial appointments were based on President Alberto Fernández’s decision, his vice president’s son said.

Fernández reshuffled his cabinet days after Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner publicly blamed him for the country’s political crisis following the government’s electoral defeat on September 12. Fernandez appointed Juan Luis Manzur as the new chief of staff, at the suggestion of the vice-president, as well as several other ministers and the press secretary.

“The question of the names and whether the changes were sufficient or not, it is decided by Alberto – it is clear,” said Máximo Kirchner, who is also deputy of the province of Buenos Aires, in an interview with Radio del Plata. .

He added that he would support the new appointees now that the political turmoil is over. The recent elections have been “complex” because of the Covid-19 crisis, he said, defending his mother, who was a former president, adding that she had always been a responsible politician.

The Cabinet changes sought to reduce a political crisis that began a week ago when the damaging loss of the midterm primaries exposed differences within the ruling Frente de Todos coalition.

The appointments come just a day after Cristina Fernández de Kirchner called for a cabinet overhaul in an open letter blaming the president for the poor outcome of the midterm vote. In the letter, she said she proposed Manzur for the chief of staff position during a face-to-face conversation with Fernandez earlier in the week.

The vice-president, who had chosen Fernández to lead his Peronist coalition for the 2019 presidential elections, called the mid-term primaries a “political catastrophe” caused by his economic strategy. She criticized him for his lack of social spending, adding pressure on Fernandez even as he seeks to renegotiate a $ 45 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund.

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by Nicolle Yapur & Jorgelina do Rosario, Bloomberg

LAHOR:

The Argentine government is considering acquiring 12 JF-17A Block III fighters in Pakistan and has set aside $ 664 million in funding for the purchase of the aircraft, according to reports.

According to UK Defense Journal, a website focused on defense issues, the Argentine government “has officially included $ 664 million in funding for the purchase of 12 PAC JF-17A Block III fighters in Pakistan in a 2022 budget proposal. presented to its Parliament ”. .

The decision to buy the plane jointly built by Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and Chinese company Chengdu Aircraft Corporation came after South Korea refused to sell the planes to Buenos Aires last year due to British pressure, according to the report.

Similarly, Sweden’s Saab AB in 2015 ruled out facilitating the sale of Gripen fighter jets to Argentina following an agreement to build and export fighter jets from Brazil, Reuters reported. at the time.

It can be noted here that Great Britain imposed an embargo on Argentina after the Falklands War in 1982, hampering the sale of military equipment to Argentina. A former Argentine defense minister last year called the decision British “imperial pride”.

Read Pakistani Navy inducts first long-range maritime jet patrol aircraft

However, it remains to be seen whether the deal with Pakistan will come to fruition due to the JF-17 ejection seat built by a British company – Martin Baker.

An article from MercoPress, the South Atlantic news agency, said Argentina’s Air Force is almost grounded because, in addition to the more than 50 planes lost in the Falklands conflict, it has failed has not been able to replace them, either for financial reasons or the British embargo.

What is the JF-17?

The JF-17 Thunder is a multi-role, single-engine fighter aircraft jointly developed by the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation of China. The builders say the JF-17 can be used for multiple roles, including interception, ground attack, anti-ship and aerial reconnaissance.

58% of the JF-17 airframe, including its forward fuselage, wings and vertical stabilizer, are produced in Pakistan, while 42% are produced in China, with final assembly taking place in Pakistan.

With the PASO primaries apparently only a distant memory, a self-inflicted political crisis gripped the Fernández-Fernández administration. Apparently confirming theories which suggested that it was Cristina Fernández de Kirchner who was really in charge from the start, this internal tension within the ruling Frente de Todos put the vice president back in the spotlight. How powerful is it, really? At the same time, the notion of the emergence of a “albertism”Took hold, suggesting that the president could build his own power structure to repeal the Kirchnerite attack. Alberto was at his lowest since taking office last Sunday after suffering the equivalent of a technical knockout at the hands of the main opposition coalition, Juntos, but also the eternally unpopular left and even the liberals of Javier Milei and José Luis Espert, all had relatively successful elections. How strong is it, really?

Another curious fact about all this mess is the fact that it happened after the primaries were held, giving the Fernández-Fernández administration the opportunity to regain some of the lost ground with the advantage of relying on the state resources. It wasn’t going to be easy, having been handily defeated by a coalition formed by former President Mauricio Macri (with the memory of his disastrous administration still fresh) and currently led by city mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta. In the Peronist stronghold that is the province of Buenos Aires – nicknamed “the mother of all battles” – Juntos obtained a total of 38% of the votes, totaling the two primary candidates (Deputy Mayor Diego Santilli and neurosurgeon Facundo Manes ), against 33.6% for Victoria. Tolosa Paz. Nationally, the opposition took 40 percent, against 31 percent for the Frente de Todos. If these were legislative elections, these results would mean that the Pan-Peronist front would lose the quorum in the Senate, a devastating blow for Fernández de Kirchner who chairs that chamber of Congress. In the lower house, they would lose key allies and enough seats not to retain their majority status.

Do they have a real chance of reversing the “unprecedented electoral defeat”, as Cristina puts it? It seems more unlikely now, after publicly releasing dirty laundry and acknowledging a split between Alberto and the Peronist Falcons closer to Kirchnerism. “In the province of Buenos Aires, an inexcusable [sic] social and economic thermometer of our country, last Sunday we were abandoned by 440,172 voters that Unidad Ciudadana had obtained in 2017 with our candidacy for the Senate … with a divided Peronism, no national or provincial government to support us and the Mauricio administration Macri and his judicial teams persecuting and incarcerating former officials and opposing owners of left-wing and right-wing media, ”the vice-president wrote in her fateful letter. It’s not clear if Cristina thinks they can make a comeback, but she certainly has a lot at stake: While she called on ministers and officials who responded to her to submit their resignations, a few die-hard Kirchnerites remained. furtively at their posts, including National Treasure Prosecutor Carlos Zannini and Juan Martín Mena, Deputy Minister (and virtual) of Justice.

Blame Alberto. In the heat of the moment, the main culprit in the Frente de Todos electoral tragedy was none other than President Alberto Fernández. Yet, as stated in a column written that evening, Alberto is the perfect man to be responsible for such a mess. He led a mediocre government that was forced to face the double whammy of an endemic and painful economic crisis and a global pandemic. During his best moment, when the collaboration with Rodríguez Larreta and the mayor of the province Axel Kicillof led to very high approval ratings, Alberto doubled down on the small political skirmishes that were the hallmark of the pernicious Macri-Cristina division against which he campaigned in 2019. As he began to metamorphose into a Kirchnerite caricature, he personally made a series of unnecessary unforced errors, the culmination of which was attending a birthday party in Olivos for his partner, Fabiola Yáñez, in the heat of the moment.

And yet Alberto is an easy target. The perfect punching bag. The structural problems facing the Argentine political system run considerably deeper than the superficial and light-hearted Alberto Fernández. As in 2015, when a majority of the population was fed up with 12 years of Kirchnerism and an exhausted economic model that engendered stagflation, Macri won the mandate to oust Cristina and her crew. This same energy was palpable in 2019 after the implosion of Mauricio’s government. And it resurfaced, lambasting the Frente de Todos at the polls but also fueling the growth of anti-party candidates like Milei (who has done extremely well in the city of Buenos Aires) and the left, traditionally a huge underachiever. At least since the 2001 hiatus, but exacerbated by the last three presidential terms, a generation of Argentines has become poorer, less educated and increasingly dehumanized. The Kirchnérite epic of Néstor’s early years no longer works.

So, it’s hard to simply blame Alberto, and Ms. Fernández de Kirchner’s hard-line approach seems to make matters worse. To the point where she was forced to call Economy Minister Martín Guzmán and tell him that she was not seeking his resignation, despite months of fueling this rumor. Guzmán is all this government has between him and an aggressive market reaction akin to what spelled the end of Macri. Cristina emerges as the obvious culprit, having removed her cabinet ministers and publicly denounced the president and his administration as incompetent who executed only half of the annual budget with only three months in the year. Still, it would be excessive to blame it solely on Cristina as well. The problem in question is structural, it concerns a generalized failure of the systems with the front and the center of the Argentine state. Alberto, Macri and José de San Martín are said to have crashed this ship, which has reached a level of dysfunction that only becomes a more effective poverty machine.

Hopefully this process leads to moderation and rationality for all political actors, because all their necks are at stake. Just like our lives.

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With so many voices cast by the various media throughout this momentous week and with so much in the air following the midweek Cabinet crisis (at least at the time of writing), this column is found simultaneously with nothing and everything to write. Make the best approach to retreat to the usual comfort zone of that space – relating the present to the past based on a Herald of Buenos Aires newsroom experience dating back to the very first elections of this current democratic period in 1983.

But in my personal case and in an electoral context which goes back even further – from 1977 to 1979, I was part of a European university team which worked on a uniform electoral system for the first direct elections of the European Parliament of the last one. year. Still none, so not too much of a bragging claim, but it has given me vast experience in things like the D’Hondt electoral system adopted by Argentina – so much so that I can actually spell that name correctly, unlike almost everyone here (D’Hont is almost universal local use). Victor D’Hondt (1841-1901) was a Ghent jurist and mathematician who devised the method of successive division of proportional representation used to allocate seats – since this method is misunderstood almost as often as the name of its Belgian creator is misspelled, this column could explain it a bit further down if space allows.

But for now on more immediate and central issues. Let’s start this week with its beginning with the PASO primary vote last Sunday. The ruling coalition crisis that has occurred now makes this already seem like old news, so let me condense all the myriads of votes into a single 70 percent that basically tells the story – 70 percent have voted against the government, 70 percent voted for the two main coalitions (as against nearly 80 percent in PASO 2019 and almost 90 percent in the actual presidential vote) and the turnout in the central battlefield of the province of Buenos Aires was 70 percent (well, okay, 69.3 percent and 66.2 percent nationally).

Almost the mirror image of the PASO 2019 primaries with the common denominator of a heavy anti-government oscillation confusing the anticipated expectations of close competition. Ahead of the vote, a cryptic electorate offered little clue as to whether all the calamities and mistakes of the past 18 months would result in a massive protest vote or disenchanted abstention, but the former largely prevailed. At the time, the government may have had reason to hope those ballots were catharsis that could be reversed in November, but the ongoing autistic power games only fuel anger against a dysfunctional coalition. .

Little light at the end of this tunnel but rather than speculating on an uncertain future, let’s see what exit strategies the past can offer. For the most obvious (especially for any populist government), one need only go back to the penultimate PASO primary of 2017 in San Luis, when the Rodríguez Saá clan turned a loss of nearly 20 points into a triumph with the comfortable margin of 12%. halfway through the simple expedient of throwing money and everything except the kitchen sink (including even the kitchen sink, since household appliances were generously distributed) to the electorate. Even though replicating this formula nationwide would cost around 90 times that cost, it immediately occurred to many Kirchnerite minds and indeed, early last week, the announcement of a package of Election giveaways (including a resumption of IFE emergency documents from last year) was scheduled for Thursday. But massive midweek resignations, including heads of social security services in charge of many of the potential benefits, have delayed all this (at least at the time of writing) – on that front, Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would appear to be his own worst enemy.

Another reference to the recent past seems to have been a main catalyst for the Cabinet crisis – the head of La Cámpora and provincial minister of Buenos Aires, Andrés’Cuervo‘Larroque pointed out that the last two mid-term defeats of a Kirchnérite government in 2009 and 2013 were countered by changing the chief of staff and the minister of the economy in both cases. What he failed to mention was that the 2011 landslide was more the result of a vote of sympathy over the death of Néstor Kirchner the previous year than of having Aníbal Fernández (suddenly become under the limelight) as chief of staff or Amado Boudou as Minister of the Economy. when the 2015 presidential election was in fact lost. What he also omitted was the deciding factor of strong dissident Peronist lists in previous defeats as last Sunday’s debacle was suffered by a supposedly invincible united Peronism (unheard of since 1983), thus rendering it unseen. all the more shattering.

Larroque’s suggestion was most likely inspired by his current boss, Axel Kicillof, who became the economy czar in the latter case in 2013 and who kept the crisis largely asymptomatic through capital controls and devaluation. major, but these methods would hardly work now – how can monthly dollar purchases be less than US $ 200 (US $ 2,000 was the cap in 2013)? There is no room for devaluation with annual inflation already around 50% as a result of printing billions of dollars in money against the pandemic and the tax burden also cannot be increased by realistically in a society with more people below the poverty line than ever before.

Not that there is anything new about the economic mega-crises or the changes of ministers in Argentina. There were no less than six ministers of the economy in the hyperinflationary year 1989 and four at the other end of convertibility in 2001, while the current presidency theoretically still has 27 months to run. Rather than a cabinet reshuffle, President Alberto Fernández needs a coalition reshuffle if institutions are to be preserved.

More room to go into the explanations of successive divisions while leaving readers unaware of what is happening or what will happen – but at least they can now spell “D’Hondt” correctly.

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