Stories that caught our eye
ROSATTI IN THE CROSSHAIRS
President Alberto Fernández started the week and year by calling for the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Horacio Rosatti, even if the Frente de Todos caucus in the lower house is far short of the two-thirds majority needed to begin proceedings in the Senate, summoning a Tuesday meeting of governors prior to sending an impeachment request to Congress. The meeting was attended by 11 of the 23 provincial governors, of whom only three (all Radical) are enlisted in the Juntos por el Cambio opposition. President Fernández called for extraordinary sessions of Congress, primarily for the impeachment drive against the Supreme Court and to approve the taxation needed to fund the increase in the City’s federal revenue-sharing allocation ordered by the Supreme Court but also for economic legislation, including a new tax whitewash. Kirchnerite senators were already proposing an onslaught against Rosatti as the cause of “institutional chaos” in the last days of 2022, joined by Buenos Aires Province Governor Axel Kicillof and Interior Minister Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, but President Fernández did not set his offensive in motion until his return from Brazil. In a related development, City Security Minister Marcelo D’alessandro, under fire for his leaked chats with key Rosatti aide Silvio Robles and for his presence at the Lago Escondido meeting with judges and Clarín executives last October, last Tuesday took a “temporary” leave of absence of at least two months. This crisis reportedly prompted a huddle between ex-president Mauricio Macri and City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta in Villa La Angostura, the Patagonian vacation spot where both men are vacationing.
NEW YEAR WITH LULA
President Alberto Fernández began 2023 by flying to Brasilia for the inauguration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s third term, joining 17 other heads of state in hailing a new era among some 300,000 other people. The President stayed on overnight for a face-to-face meeting with his new colleague lasting over an hour as the two men sketched out the broad lines of an integration agreement while Lula pledged support for his neighbour’s re-election bid this year. Lula will be attending the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC in its Spanish acronym) later this month on January 23-24.
NEW YEAR DISSOLUTIONS
At least three senior officials – INADI Anti-discrimination trustee Victoria Donda, Anti-corruption Office (OA in its Spanish acronym) head Félix Crous and Mint Director Rodolfo Gabrielli – failed to see 2023 in with the rest of the government, resigning just beforehand. The reasons for these exits seemed clearest in the case of Gabrielli (a failure to print money at the speed of inflation) while opinions were divided as to whether Donda and Crous left because of presidential dissatisfaction or the political disenchantment of the departing official although there may have been health issues in the latter case. President Alberto Fernández seemed in no hurry to replace them with no word as to their successors at press time but before 2022 ended, he announced that he would be recruiting Antonio Aracre, the local CEO of the Swiss-based pesticide multinational Syngenta, to be his chief advisor in place of Julián Leunda, who resigned more than a month ago – an appointment viewed as a move towards a socio-economic pact.
NEW YEAR INCREASES
The year began with a raft of price increases. Bus fares rose by 39 percent on average in a hike held over from last month while the average for train rides was more like 30 percent although some long-distance journeys doubled or trebled. Fuel prices rose their first four percent within a 17 percent increase agreed for the first third of the year. A similar scheme was applied to telecommunications where previous increases of 9.8 percent this month and 7.8 percent next month were changed in midweek to four percent in each of the first two months of the year and 3.5 percent in March while companies beyond the control of the government were introducing hikes ranging between 19 and 23 percent. Millions of households will see their gas, electricity and water billing going up by 30 percent or so as subsidies are withdrawn. The pay of domestic help is to rise seven percent this month, five percent next month and four percent in March, following an eight percent hike last month accompanied by a Christmas bonus of 24,000 pesos divided according to the number of hours worked. Other New Year innovations included an 8384 percent annual increase of rents and an upward tweak of 6.9 percent for prepaid health schemes. The electricity bill increases come after the New Year celebrations of around a quarter of this city’s population in Caballito, Flores, Liniers and Constitución among other neighbourhoods were abruptly interrupted by a massive power cut.
MALVINAS ANNIVERSARY
The 190th anniversary of the British seizure of the Malvinas islands last Tuesday was marked by Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero (accompanied by his Social Development colleague Victoria Tolosa Paz) declaiming: “There is only one voice uniting all Argentine men and women – that the Malvinas have been, are and will be Argentine.”
VILLA GESELL TRIAL
The trial of the brutal murder of 18-year-old law student Fernando Báez Sosa by eight rugby players at a Villa Gesell disco in early 2020 unfolded in the first week of the year in Dolores with some searing testimony, starting with the victim’s mother. The verdict is widely expected to be life imprisonment for most or even all of the octet.
SUMMER TOURIST BOOM
Huge numbers are being reported for summer tourism. According to CAME retailers association, almost 20 million Argentines (19.7 million, to be exact, or 58 percent up from last summer) have booked holidays in local destinations between mid-december and the end of this month, ranging from Jujuy down to Tierra del Fuego and with the Atlantic coast obviously featuring prominently.
EMIR DROPS BY
Only three weeks after hosting Argentina’s World Cup triumph and draping a traditional Arabic cloak around Lionel Messi, the Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, yachted in from Punta del Este to visit the new world champions in midweek. Once landed, he met up with local friends and associates of Qatar, who include the 2004 Roland Garros tennis champion Gastón Gaudio, who has more recently become something of a Qatari spearhead here.
COVID LURKS AGAIN
Even if the start of 2023 was not a patch on the first days of last year when the Omicron variant was still causing three-digit daily death tolls, there were fears that the multimillion celebrations of Argentina’s third World Cup might have caused a new outbreak as the last week of 2022 showed daily cases of coronavirus contagion entering into five digits (a total of 72,588). While a huge percentage of the population has been vaccinated at least once, only half have received the third dose and 15-16 percent the fourth.