READERS WRITE
BATTLE OF THE BULGE: PART 106
Dear Sirs,
Last Tuesday the government proudly announced that an agreement concerning the private external debt had been finally reached with the main creditors, although certain legal qualifications had still to be polished up. Main impression: bulky payments postponed till 2028, when presumably Macri’s whizzkids will have to struggle with the payments! Kristalina clear? Argentina is like a family that was once rich and just cannot cut its cloth to fit its new impoverished suit!
More recently, the Criminal Court resolved that Alberto Fernández’s proposal to restructure the Judiciary was unconstitutional. A severe blow to the whirligig president, who doesn’t believe in economic plans because he has always lived off a teat of the Macrocephalic State and has been only too happy to impose a four-and-a-half-month’s quarantine on his hapless compatriots, many of whom are now struggling to reach the end of the month, each and every month, since last April.
“A man for all reasons, most of them sadly outdated, such as import substitution and state-funded enterprises.”
Very bust wishes, David Parsons, Via email
WHO’S WHO?
“The worst is yet to come.” Whose are these optimistic words? It’s WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reflecting on Covid-19 pandemic. In case he hadn’t been clear enough, Tedros added: “There’s no silver bullet to defeat coronavirus and there might never be.”
Wow! We really needed these uplifting words in the midst of such a global tragedy, didn’t we? I mean, I know they are supposed to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, but couldn’t they gild the pill a little? We are all looking forward to the end of this nightmare, to the discovery of a vaccine, and saying that all this is almost impossible, doesn`t help at all. On the contrary, it’s a bummer, a real downer.
When will scientists, researchers, epidemiologists and politicians realise that our psychological well-being is as important as our physical health? Maybe, we should remind them. Irene Bianchi, Ringuelet, La Plata
EMPATHY
By definition empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another. I defy you, dear reader, to give me the name of one single member of our national government and its surroundings showing signs of it – from the president who wags his finger at us like naughty school children, down to the health minister and vice-minister of the province of Buenos Aires, Drs Death Gollan and Panic Kreplak. By contrast I offer you a master in empathy, the health minister of Buenos Aires City, Dr Fernán Quirós, who informs and advises the populace with solid facts in a pleasant and sympathetic way, due to which by now he has become a rather popular figure. At the utter extreme opposite to empathy we find the queen of dismissiveness, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who has never shown the slightest sympathy for people in distress, whether confronted with the landslide in Orán in Salta, the Cromañon fire, the Plaza Once train disaster, or during the present pandemic.
The trouble is that, when a country goes through very critical times, as we will in the coming year, empathy from above is vital for the morale of the people. Just think of the way empathetic Churchill kept the spirits up at the time of the worst bombings. So, I have to admit, it worries me to observe this absence of empathy from our present day rulers, something which will force one and all of us to display mutual empathy , raising each other’s spirits for the sake of ourselves and for the sake of the Republic, darn it! Harry Ingham, City