Eye of the storm III: Powers that be

Still more about the campo crisis, farmers' strike, agricultural lockout, or whatever your choice of words.

Once I said that Cristina's first speech (the one I heard while I was held in Villa María, back from vacations, by a road block) was the worst piece of diplomacy I'd ever heard. I need to correct — Cristina's last speech at Plaza de Mayo, surrounded by the dreadful camarilla his husband assembled, and facing the crowd of vociferous supporters herded like cattle to applaud her, was the worst piece of diplomacy, the one thing anyone seeking to solve a conflict should never do. Intended as a show of strength, it enraged everyone and ended up having the opposite effect. Most analyzed it as a show of weakness and insecurity. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction, triggered by a mentality that equals adulation with approval.

Decisions in the national government are taken within a circle of four or five people, with occasional nods to a few more. Orders for the rest of the administration come from the top, from those few people. No experts are consulted. Past experience and history are ignored. Congress is bypassed. The press is informed by leaks or learns about new government measures when the president starts ranting about them in partisan meetings. So are the governors, even those that identify as Kirchnerist, and the public. That's what everybody saw these days, and what angered many, I think. Myself, I'm sick and tired of my representatives being silent.

Agustín Rossi, deputy for Santa Fe, has been verbally punishing or threatening dissidence and opposition, and no-one has approached him to tell him that he should be lobbying for his province's interests in Congress, instead of campaigning (unsurprisingly, there are already signs reading "A BETTER COUNTRY WITH CRISTINA & AGUSTIN" painted all over Rosario). Carlos Reutemann, senator for Santa Fe, a man I have no love for whatsoever, surprised many by signing a statement next to governor Hermes Binner, asking the national government to turn back the export tax increase and sit down to discuss properly. Rossi promptly notified Reutemann in public that his candidacy for the 2009 legislative elections "is no more". Reutemann's sin was putting the interests of his constituency (and his own political interests tied to them, of course) before the loyalty to this Kirchnerist "project" no-one can exactly describe, but which seems to reduce to "say yes to whatever Cristina woke up this morning thinking of".

This was just one example. Here's another: the governor of Chubut, Mario Das Neves, sharply criticized Chief of Cabinet Alberto Fernández for his rough handling of the crisis. Two Kirchnerist governors quickly and bitterly responded, and Néstor Kirchner ordered public works and fund grants for Chubut to be suspended as punishment. Das Neves is now a pariah, as is Juan Schiaretti, the governor of Córdoba who belatedly and half-heartedly aligned with some of the farmers' demands, and is now shunned by both the farmers and the national government.

The message is clear: one either accepts the Kirchners micromanaging our resources to achieve their goal of "income redistribution" (a goal that is as far today as it was in the 1990s), or opposes them and therefore turns into an enemy of the poor, or worse. This is how most people interpret the government discourse now, and that's why (regardless of what they said) the cacerolazos were not about the agricultural producers, but about government policies. And the reason why no-one wants to acknowledge that is, simply, that the pro-government folks were right in more than a few cases when they pointed out that people hate the Kirchners due to socioeconomic class issues. I know this — I've heard it said to my face — many people hate the fact that the police aren't sent to beat up those dirty piqueteros, and that the government spends a lot of tax money on welfare for the poor, while taxes and inflation eat away the money that the middle class deserves to have so as to spend it in SUVs and vacations abroad. Today it's not politically correct to demonstrate against a government for those reasons — so many people used the campo strike as an excuse.

The bad thing is, aside from that, why should it be wrong to admit that you don't like your government because it uses the poor as an excuse for their real plans? I don't like this government. I would like it to be straightened by a strong opposition in Congress, and by strong independent leaders of the same party who look after their constituents' interests, rather then the Kirchners'. But no-one wanted to say that. Most people restrained themselves; some, obliquely, attacked Cristina's stereotypically feminine spending habits; others reacted to Luis D'Elía's attack on the Plaza de Mayo demonstrators; many blamed the strike and the crisis on Cristina's arrogance. Yet what if the president wants to have a collection of expensive shoes? It's her money. It's not like she's spending millions. What about D'Elía? A more serious matter, no doubt: a hateful bigot with a band of thugs at his disposal, encouraged by the government. But then the Kirchners distanced themselves from him and can do it again at any time, and it only takes the police to do their work. The real cause of the urban cacelorazos is, by and large, the hate of the middle class for the emergence of this political model.

Argentina had more than enough of this sixty years ago. Back then it ended with a coup d'état — a few hundreds dead, a few hundred exiled, and then it was "back to business" and no trouble for anyone... except if you wanted to criticize the new powers. That kind of thing fortunately won't happen now. For good or bad, there's no easy way out.