Claudio Lozano on Cristina's "political naiveté"

This is a translation of an op-ed by Claudio Lozano on Crítica Digital about Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's speech. Lozano is a left-wing economist associated with the CTA labour union, former Kirchner supporter, and now a national deputy for Proyecto Sur. He speaks of Cristina's acknowledgment that the government's only mistake when implementing the mobile tax exports was the "political naiveté" of thinking that people who earn a lot of money would tolerate the state's demanding of some of that money to give to the poor. The emphasis is mine.

I wish it were the first speech. I wish the argument of political naiveté were believable. I wish we were discussing a serious income redistribution programme while taking responsibility for the fact that in Argentina, since 2007, the economy and hunger are growing in parallel. I wish the debate of a more egalitarian relation between the Nation and the provinces were seriously undertaken. I wish we were in the presence of a government whose goal were capturing extraordinary profits to realize the proclaimed goal of "paying off the Argentinians' deficitary social account". It's a pity that it's not the case. Can it be true that they want to solve the social situation, when INDEC is under intervention and millions of poor people are deliberately hidden from view? What's the reason why the Government speaks of transferring income, and yet its social programme includes no concrete mechanism of transference of resources to families? Does the Government not know that, by just implementing a universal assignment of 100 pesos for every child, extreme poverty (hunger) would be practically eliminated among underage citizens? Does the Government know that simply by setting aside 1% of the annual GDP the issue of hunger would be solved, and with 5% of the GDP poverty would be eliminated altogether? Isn't the Fund created today a bit scarce, when we know that foreign trade taxes will bring in, this year, more than 50 billion pesos? Considering that in the last five years there's been no advance on tax reform, no advance on seizing the profits of oil, mining and fishing, and that in the case of agricultural profits this was done in a small proportion, and granting benefits that favoured the concentration of this economic sector, is today's presidential speech believable? I wish it were true. I wish it weren't just one more speech. But why do we explain what we're going to do with the tax collection above 35%? Weren't export taxes intended to redistribute income?

During five years we've heard the Kirchners and their supporters incessantly congratulate themselves on their progressivism. But nothing has been done to make this country more egalitarian. Kirchnerism has an automatic majority on both Chambers of Congress, a Congress that never refuses a command, and yet all they seem capable of doing is extracting money from one sector of the economy using the bluntest tools at their disposal. Even one of Página/12's commentators, one month after the beginning of the farmers' strike, had to acknowledge that the Kirchners' government is not reformist or progressive at all. Poverty and social inequality are much worse than they were 25 years ago, right after 6 years of a corrupt military dictatorship and a disastrous war. A huge gap still lies between the poor and rich in Argentina: the wealthiest 10% earns 30 times more than the poorest 10%, worse than during the neoliberal rule of the Menem administration. The tax system is horribly regressive: 47% of the total tax revenue corresponds to the IVA (our VAT), a tax on consumption, while you pay no taxes of any kind if you win a million through speculation or when you sell your company's stocks.

And on top of this, the president explains that the leftovers from an exceptionally high tax, imposed by the Executive branch without congressional approval, will be used to redistribute income. I mean, wasn't redistribution the main reason why they needed so much money? And if so, where's the rest of it? Because we sure can't see it anywhere.

May 25 in Rosario and Cristina Kirchner: Complain, deny, repeat

I was speaking, yesterday, of the meeting called by the agricultural organizations in Rosario last Sunday, May 25, to protest the export taxes and the government's handling of agriculture and cattle farming (from now on "the meeting of the campo"). In passing I mentioned the media coverage.

It appears that hundreds of reporters and photojournalists came to Rosario, and the meeting was, of course, in the cover of every newspaper the next day. The coverage itself was varied. La Nación, predictably, gave a lot of space to old-fashioned "common man in the street" personal testimonies, and romanticized the whole thing as an epic march of the dignified rural middle class. Both La Nación and Clarín supplied a lot of video and audio, and gloated over the defeat of the government strategy. Página/12, also predictably, attacked the meeting with irony, noting how some people who protest against taxes came to Rosario flying their own airplanes or driving brand-new SUVs.

Página also did another thing, which to me was an echo of the Kirchnerist model — denial and repetition. The online edition devoted more than 50% of its content to reposting old op-ed pieces dating from the beginning of the government-vs.-campo crisis. Some were brilliant, valuable arguments for the export taxes; some were sectarian, sentimental, others cold and technical; but they were all old. Pertinent, maybe, but old. Repeated. Why republish them?

That curious fact immediately reminded me of the Kirchnerist government's insistence on certain issues to the exclusion of a reality that's biting them in the nose — the grown-up equivalent of a child closing her eyes, covering her ears and shouting "la la la I can't hear you". Kirchner (Cristina/Néstor) doesn't want to see reality. That's why Cristina had thousands of people brought to her speech in Salta, and for that audience she reveled on her husband's administration's socioeconomic achievements. This time she kept it short. She's been known to go at it for an hour. Néstor Kirchner himself never tired of congratulating himself about the economy on every single speech he gave. Repetition, noise, a mantra of figures of poverty, GDP, employment, exports, industrial production. Nonsense. Even the true parts.

Why nonsense? Argentina is doing badly on many respects. It's much, much better than six years ago, but it's not better than 15 years ago. There are problems. When the people insist that there are problems, the president can't tell them to shut up. She can't tell them to value what they've got and thank their stars they have such a good, progressive, popular government, and act offended when some dare complain about an issue. A government is not to the people what a a father is to his son — we're all adults here. The government additionally has the responsibility of keeping the high moral ground.

Of course, when a crypto-fascist movement like Peronism is in power, citizens are treated like children. Though Kirchnerism doesn't really have a cult of personality, the purposefully crafted mannerisms Cristina employs to resemble Evita Perón are rather obvious.

Now, a good father may occasionally display frustration or sadness when his children don't appreciate his efforts, but eventually he'll stop whining and do what must be done. Cristina Kirchner isn't even up to that role. She has complained about her children's lack of love for what she did for them, she has repeated ad nauseam that she's doing her best and wants to be everyone's good mother (if only us children would obey!), she's yelled at us a little, and after that, sensing no response, she has frozen. She doesn't know what to do next. She's surrounded by powerful, violent, resentful people, and she knows she has to take them into account. They put her where she is now, after all. One of them even sleeps with her (we presume) and presides over her political party. What to do? Cristina doesn't know.

Crazy Argentina, take 1

Just a news scoop from today's online newspapers, since time doesn't permit anything else...

From Clarín, the new enemy of the people according to Kirchnerist doctrine: the government reports poverty in Argentina is down to 20.7%, while private estimates (where the price of the food basket used to calculate the poverty line is not grossly fudged) place it at close to 30%, and in the meantime, the census bureau INDEC suddenly announces that it won't take into account the measurements of inflation outside the Greater Buenos Aires area, where the fudging is effected. In fact, the Kirchnerist mayors of Greater Buenos Aires have been ordered to send inspectors to check prices in the field and report to Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno, in case these "deviations from the ideal" have to be, let's say, corrected. And while the anti-inflation brigades keep prices down in the cities, piquetero leader Luis D'Elía says he's taking his guys to the countryside to defend the government against the evil machinations of coup-inciting farmers on strike.

From Crítica Digital we also learn that members of three different gangs groups of piqueteros K attacked Luciano Miguens, head of the Sociedad Rural Argentina (i.e. the Argentine Rural Society, aka "the Oligarchy"), the police being suspiciously absent at the time, and the Jóvenes K (that is, the Kirchnerist Youth) protested at Clarín's kiosk at the Buenos Aires Book Fair.

From Página/12, recently remade as the government's official press organ, we hear nothing of all this. How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?

Eye of the storm II: The papers

A few more things about the farmers' strike, or as Página/12 calls it, the agricultural businessmen's lockout. The strike, lockout, or whatever you call it, is now on hold while the leaders of the movement wait for their call to negotiate with the government.

Covers of Página/12 and La Nación for March 26 (the day after Cristina's inflammatory first speech, the cacerolazos in upper-class Buenos Aires, and the disbanding of Plaza de Mayo demonstrators by Luis D'Elía's thugs).

Since the subject of Página/12's word choice came up, here's something I meant to say before. I was appalled by Página's coverage of the conflict. I'm well aware that Página is a leftist newspaper, and like all media, they select news and editorialize on them from that perspective. I'm a lefty myself, not a radical, but in general I'm in agreement with that perspective.

Sometimes Página's op-eds go over the top and I don't like that; I don't like how certain people in their staff see 1970s' politics, or class struggle, or whatever their pet subject, in every bit of current news. To balance that, I read La Nación, which is right-wing and anti-government, but also has a few really good writers, alongside some whose opinions make my stomach turn.

Well, my discovery these days was that Página/12 is obviously, visibly, on the pay of the national government. Página's coverage of the strike/lockout was so deliberately skewed, so unctuously pro-government, so grossly anti-strike, so monolithically defensive of Cristina, that I can't be convinced that ideology alone is responsible. I felt angry. The rest of the media coverage was sloppy, partial, sensationalist, sentimental..., as usual. Even La Nación didn't dig so much in the trash. Página's was a pro-government campaign, almost as subtle as Luis D'Elía screaming his hate for the rich.

The fact is, I'm a "salad bar"-type political pragmatist. I tend to distrust and discount the opinions of people who are in the extremes, but outside of those, I applaud anyone, from the left or the right, who comes up with a good idea, or something that looks like a good idea. I had a deep distrust of Néstor Kirchner when he ran for president. I changed my mind as he did some really cool things, like renewing the Supreme Court, facing up to the utility companies that wanted to triple their fees, maneuvering around the defaulted bond-holders who would see the country broke to get paid, and repealing the laws that prevented the torturers and murderers of the last dictatorship from being tried. Then he started channeling Juan Domingo Perón or something (that is, Perón minus the articulateness and good diction in speeches) and the worst elements in his government acquired power, and then he passed it all on to Cristina, who has been doing exactly the opposite of what should be done since Day 1.

All this time (getting back to the subject) I heard Néstor and Cristina criticizing the media for this and that. Néstor K once said the media should inform objectively instead of doing opposition politics (that is, kill the editorial section, kill political analysis — just repeat whatever the government officially communicates to the press), and more than once he pointed at specific journalists and specific papers. Cristina is even worse. For all her supposed communicational talents, she sounded remarkably stupid, to me at least, when she tried to make a sarcastic comment — "It seems as if the media were forbidden from printing good news." The Kirchners never understood journalism, maybe because in Santa Cruz the media were few and were controlled by their friends and cronies.

Up to the export tax crisis, Página/12 was (so it seemed to me) rather neutral, not in the sense that it didn't editorialize, but in the sense that it wasn't systematically putting out an apology of the government. La Nación, on the other hand (so it seemed to me) was always trying to poke holes in everything the government did. Granted, as of late Página would have real trouble finding something good to say about the government, and the ideological strain was showing; and La Nación was enjoying a free ride on the scandal rollercoaster, so it came out as more objective (negative spin wasn't necessary) and didn't look so clearly anti-government.

When the countryside rose, Página/12 suddenly shifted gears (or so it seemed to me...) and launched an all-out offensive against the critics of the Kirchner administration. Even the witty Rudy & Paz comics became bitter, unfunny attacks on the "oligarchy". You could count a half-dozen headlines each day, every one of them a long editorial piece, pointing out the many sins, past and present, of the participants in the protest — and not one objective criticism of the idiotic measure taken by the Ministry of Economy which had caused all the trouble in the first place.

It got me really mad. I've gone mad with La Nación over the coverage of certain episodes by specific writers, here and there, and I'm accustomed to see through its supposed objectivity into its rotten conservative heart. But I didn't expect this from Página: a whole paper, which used to cover a variety of topics seriously when appropriate, or with well-placed irony and sarcasm in other cases, turned overnight into a government propaganda machine. Not for a left-wing government, but for an administration that's fast turning us back to old-style fascism. I can barely read it anymore. In fact, since the campo crisis started, I almost don't read about it in the papers — I pick and choose only the shorter informative articles, and quickly skip over the editorials.

It's all bare ideology out there now. Dialogue, compromise and solutions seem to have been banished.

Página/12 does sarcasm

Página/12 had two very good articles last Wednesday (I was going to blog this on Thursday but I thought dengue was more important). One was a delicious sarcastic commentary about the rate of inflation, which according to the government-influenced census bureau (INDEC) was only 0.3% in February. The other was a light philo-psycho-sociological piece about the use of a certain word by a candidate for mayor of Buenos Aires City.

In the article titled "INDEC and the happy man", Maximiliano Montenegro speaks of "the "official tourist" who, according to the Argentine census bureau, had cheaper vacations this year than the previous season; the "official health insurance people", whose health is so robust that they never need to pay the heavy extra fees that became associated with many treatments last month; and the consumers that only need to stop being lazy and should simply walk down to the "official neighbourhood", where 1 kg of lettuce costs AR$2.88 as reported by INDEC, and not the 5, 6, or 7 pesos that it costs in other stores and supermarkets.

In the second article, Sandra Russo analyzes the use of the imperative verb form Retirate by BA chief-of-government candidate Mauricio Macri, the millionnaire president of the Boca Juniors football club. Macri, in the crudest display of demagogy, launched his campaign from a garbage lot in a poor neighbourhood, with a 10-year-old girl under his arm, who had (he claims) simply asked to be with him as he spoke. Macri wanted to show he wasn't the spoiled brat turned dark businessman that he really is, and obviously also took advantage of the location to mark how the center-left Telerman administration doesn't care for the poor peripheric barrios.

After the wave of criticism he aroused, Macri said he might've made a mistake: "[If I'd known this would happen], I'd've told her: Retirate que estoy por empezar" — which is supposed to mean "Kindly leave, because I'm about to start [and I don't want to use your presence as a propaganda device]", but sounds exactly like "You are dismissed". Russo points out that nobody except people like Macri (rich guys who grew up surrounded by armies of uniformed maids) would use that verb; middle-class housewives who have somebody come over to help with everyday chores will use simpler, less formal expressions like Andate "Go", Listo "That's fine", etc. Macri's choice of words thus betrays his instinctive view of those under him in the social scale.

You won't find anything like this in any major paper outside Página/12. There are meaty editorials in La Nación, to be sure, but they tend to be boring rants against President Kirchner by Joaquín Morales Solá, or rambling, purposefully vague criticisms of Argentine realpolitik by Mariano Grondona, a well-known collaborationist of the last dictatorship that likes to quote Plato and Aristotle to speak against democracy. Clarín simply doesn't understand satire, parody, or any kind of humour except simple puns; when you have to keep the distinction of being the most read newspaper in Argentina, you have to sacrifice that kind of subtleties... Página/12 has several columnists that are experts in satire, and I swear they must have a team of editors specialized in funny and shocking titles. It's more of my kind of paper, ideologically speaking, so I never, ever, read it in isolation — self-complacency is a permanent temptation.