What we learned this week
THE WEEK IN CORONAVIRUS
Today’s anniversary of quarantine finds Argentina with 2,234,913 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 54,476 deaths at press time yesterday as against 2,185,747 cases and 53,578 deaths the previous Friday. Exactly one year ago at the start of quarantine the corresponding figures were 128 confirmed cases with three dead. Public frustration with quarantine (which will not return, according to the new Health Minister Carla Vizzotti) and related problems led to aggression against both halves of the presidency in Patagonia last weekend – the van of President Alberto Fernández was stoned in Chubut Province while there was saucepan-bashing outside the El Calafate house of Vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to press for classroom education in Santa Cruz. Delayed vaccine deliveries including the continuing complications of Astrazeneca stalked the week leading up to the anguished nationwide broadcast of President Fernández on Thursday evening with vaccines reportedly running out in this city by the end of the week while 44 confirmed cases of contagion on a return flight from Mexico early in the week intensify the question-marks over air traffic.
JUSTICE FOR SORIA
Deputy Martín Soria (Frente de Todosrío Negro) was finally confirmed as Marcela Losardo’s replacement at the helm of the Justice Ministry last Monday following a week of speculation.
MAIA FOUND ALIVE
Missing seven-year-old Maia was kidnapped on Monday but turned up safely on Thursday, an episode which prompted Security Ministers Sergio Berni and Sabina Federic (representing the Buenos Aires provincial and national levels respectively) to renew their running battle.
57,997 PESOS, OR POOR
In order to clear the poverty line (which rose 2.7 percent last month), a family of four needed a February monthly income of 57,997 pesos while requiring 24,575.20 pesos not to fall into destitution, INDEC reported on Tuesday. The good news here is that for the first time in a long while the income floor to dodge poverty rose less (2.7 percent) than inflation (3.6 percent). Even so, the sum needed to stay above the poverty line still almost trebles the minimum wage of 20,587 pesos and the pension floor of 20,571 pesos. In a bid to stave off poverty, the government has increased the value of its food card by 50 percent and reached agreement with meat-packing plants for cheaper prices on certain cuts. But while INDEC will not be updating its poverty data to the second half of 2020 until the end of the month, the UCA Catholic University’s Observatorio de la Deuda Social estimates poverty at 44.2 percent of the population following the devastating impact of the pandemic and recession.
MACRI’S MEMOIR
Ex-president Mauricio Macri launched his book Primer Tiempo on Thursday, calling on the population to defeat populism and forecasting that his Juntos por el Cambio would “return to power with its lessons learned and thus able to put through a global reform package.”
MARKET WATCH
For the first time this year the parallel “blue” dollar moved upwards, from 141 to 144 pesos. But the official exchange rate stayed ahead (if its 65 percent surcharges are added), up from 95.75 to 96.50 pesos according to Banco Nación, or 154.34 pesos for savers with the surcharges. Among the unofficial but legal exchange rates the CCL moved up from 149.03 to 149.75 pesos between yesterday and last Friday while the MEP also regained ground, rising 141.60 to 144 pesos. But country risk dipped sharply from 1,631 points the previous Friday to close the week at 1,537 points yesterday.
CFK SKIPS PAY PACKET
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has formally renounced her VP current salary of 328,419 pesos a month after recovering her lifelong presidential pension from ANSES social security administration, she informed presidential chief-of-staff Julio Vitobello in a letter dated March 5 but made public on Wednesday. As an ex-president she enjoys a pension of 375,000 pesos along with 280,000 pesos as a presidential widow. In the letter the Senate head complained of having been “illegitimately” deprived of her double pension by the Mauricio Macri administration in 2015, also throwing in criticism of the tax exemption enjoyed by Supreme Court justices.
CRISTINA 1, GOOGLE 0
The Suprema Court has given the green light to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in her lawsuit against Google for a search engine entry giving her job description as “thief of the Argentine nation” last August, ruling against the software giant’s bid to deny her access to all data in her name since May 17, 2020. But the lawsuit itself still awaits a verdict. The VP has said that she would donate all damages to a children’s hospital in her native city of La Plata.
MARCH 17 REMEMBRANCE
For almost three decades now March 17 has been a bittersweet date in this city – always Saint Patrick’s Day but since 1992 also the anniversary of the terrorist car-bomb gutting the Israeli Embassy and killing at least 22 people while injuring 242. Neither that atrocity nor the terrorist bomb destruction of the AMIA Jewish community centre two years later (killing 85) has ever been clarified despite insistent suspicions of Iran and Hezbollah. The coronavirus pandemic prevented either this anniversary or Saint Patrick’s Day from being publicly marked but neither ambassador was idle – Israel’s Galit Ronen paid a virtual tribute to the terrorist bomb victims while Ireland’s Jacqueline O’halloran staged a virtual reception to honour the saint.
CHACARITA JNRS CHANTS
DAIA Jewish umbrella association said on Thursday it would file a complaint after some football fans chanted antisemitic slurs ahead of a second division match on Tuesday between Atlanta (historically linked to Argentina’s Jewish community) and Chacarita. Frustrated by their inability to enter their home stadium due to coronavirus restrictions, some 1,000 Chacarita fans chanted: “Here comes Chaca in the street, killing Jews to make soap.” This did not prevent Atlanta from winning 1-0 in a brutal match with four players sent off. In 2012, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) made a historic decision to award a win to Atlanta following a 1-1 draw during which Chacarita fans made similar chants.
FORMOSA RULING
Following a habeas corpus presented by Senator Luis Naidenoff (Radicalformosa), local federal judge María Belén López Mace yesterday ordered the free circulation of all people isolated by the provincial government within 72 hours provided that they could prove having tested negative for coronavirus, ruling that the protocols imposed by the Formosa provincial government did not correspond to national norms. Naidenoff celebrated the ruling by telling Radio Rivadavia: “After a year Formosa is again part of Argentina,” also underlining how necessary the judicial system was to correct political deviations. Earlier in the week on Wednesday several Juntos por el Cambio opposition parliamentarians (including Senate Minority Leader Naidenoff, Radical party chairman Alfredo Cornejo and Chamber of Deputies Minority Leader Mario Negri, all Radicals) were detained by the police for 40 minutes in Clorinda and promptly sued Formosa Peronist Governor Gildo Insfrán while the Juntos por el Cambio coalition called for the Formosa provincial judiciary to be placed under trusteeship.