Model of one of the two dams under construction to harness the Santa Cruz river in the southern Argentine province of that name. The project is to cost five billion dollars, and 85 percent will be financed by China. It was granted to a consortium of Argentine and Chinese companies. Credit: Represas Patagonia

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22 2016 (IPS)

Argentina’s new government is reviewing several major projects to be carried out jointly with China. But aside from a few changes in priorities, the administration is not expected to put the brakes on an alliance that Beijing classifies as strategic.

One of the campaign pledges of the conservative Mauricio Macri, who was sworn in as president on Dec. 10, was to revise or cancel agreements with China that he considered “lacking in transparency” or “secret”.

His centre-left predecessor, Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), signed a set of laws in March 2015 that gave rise to a framework agreement with China on economic cooperation and investment, strengthening relations between the two countries.

In his campaign, Macri and his associates lashed out harshly at the agreements with China. But after the excitement of the elections was over, the new government changed its tune.

“We can’t deny China’s weight in the world. It is not in Argentina’s interest to break with China,” said the new foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, describing their ties as part of “a balanced relationship with the world.”

In December, in fact, Macri used a currency swap deal (the exchange of principal and interest in one currency for the same in another) in effect with China since 2014, in the first measure he took to shore up Argentina’s foreign reserves.

And as his ambassador to Beijing he chose Diego Guelar, a diplomat who is considered one of the promoters of the alliance between China and Argentina.

“International pacts must be respected…Some believe that if we fail to honour our agreements with China, it will be well looked upon, quote unquote, by the United States and Europe,” Guelar said in an interview with the newspaper Perfil.

“But it’s quite the opposite: he who fails to honour some, does the same with others; that is, a reliable Argentina, which lives up to its international commitments and is loyal to its foreign partners, is a key factor in the credibility that we have to develop to the utmost,” he stressed.

China’s ambassador in Buenos Aires, Yang Wanming, pointed out that his country is the third-largest investor in Argentina, and that in the last five years, investments and merger and acquisition operations in Argentina have totaled 8.3 billion dollars.

Allowing these projects to go ahead “will set a good example for substantial China-Argentina cooperation in the future,” he said.

Apparently, pragmatism appears to have once more taken precedence over political rhetoric.

An inter-urban railway car in Buenos Aires on a line that connects the Retiro neighbourhood with Tigre, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires. These Chinese-made cars are part of trade and investment accords reached by the two countries in the railway industry. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

“Relations with China largely explain the years of economic growth after the 2001 crisis. Chinese investment in Latin America has grown significantly since around 2009,” Argentine academic Gonzalo Paz told IPS.

“The announcement that the accords would be reviewed was both a consequence of the election campaign and of the need for a thorough study of all of the issues in the relationship, and in particular of the megaprojects that were agreed in the final stage of the previous government,” he said.

Paz, an expert in relations between East Asia and Latin America at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., believes Macri will try to expand ties with long-time partners like Italy and France, and get relations with the United States back on track.

“But a top global power like China must continue to be a key partner of Argentina,” he added.

In an interview with the Argentine-Chinese cultural magazine Dang Dai, Guelar announced that, in any case, he would review things that “were done badly or carelessly.”

“I believe the criticism of those projects will lead to changes, but not to a break in relations with China,” the director of Dang Dai, Néstor Restivo, co-author of the book “Everything you need to know about China” published by the Paidós publishing house, told IPS.

“In the future it will be essential to see what new areas of cooperation open up or what projects are developed. In other words it would be a serious mistake to only focus on the management of the projects that emerged in the previous stage, and to not have a proactive policy,” said Paz.

One of the most emblematic projects to be reviewed is the construction of the Néstor Kirchner-Jorge Cepernic Hydroelectric Complex in the province of Santa Cruz in Argentina’s southern Patagonia region, for a total investment of five billion dollars, 85 percent of which is to be financed by China.

In 2013, the contract for the project was granted to the Patagonia Dams consortium headed by the Argentine companies Hidrocuyo and Electroingeniería and the Chinese firm Gezhboua Group.

The complex, which includes the construction of two dams on the Santa Cruz river, will generate 1,740 MW of electricity, which is to cover eight percent of demand in this energy-strapped country once it has been completed in 2020.

Another megaproject, agreed in November, involves the construction of two nuclear plants – the fourth and fifth in the country – with a total investment of some 15 billion dollars. More than half of the parts in the plants are to be produced domestically, and 85 percent of the financing will come from China.

The agreement includes technology transfer from China and the joint exploration of third country markets.

“I don’t think there will be any backtracking in relations with China,” and the same is true with the hydropower plant, which has already begun to be built and whose contract was assigned in an international tender, Restivo said.

“It’s the biggest construction project that China is currently involved in outside of China…if the new government believes some irregularity was committed, it will continue forward on another track, but it is virtually impossible to think of stopping the project,” he said.

With respect to the nuclear plants, Restivo thinks there may be changes, based on the new government’s strategic energy plan.

“But letters of intent have been signed, and it wouldn’t look good to backpedal in relations with China, although everything is negotiable,” said the economist.

“The Chinese would protest if they were left out of what has already been signed, but they are flexible or pragmatic enough to see how to eventually compensate for a lost business deal,” he said.

The project whose future Restivo has the greatest doubts about is the one signed in August 2015 by the two governments for the upgrade of the freight rail network that links 17 of Argentina’s 23 provinces and belongs to the public railroad company Belgrano Cargas y Logística.

The agreement involves a first tranche of financing from China of 2.4 billion dollars, and a second of 2.47 billion, and foresees the transport of Argentine and Brazil agricultural products to Chilean ports on the Pacific ocean.

One of the casualties of the new government’s wave of dismissals of public employees was the payroll of the company Fabricaciones Militares, which had been commissioned to build some 1,000 rail cars, with more than 80 percent nationally-made parts – a key component in the reconstruction of the local railway industry.

“It’s quite possible that now we won’t be able to count any more on the part that interests me the most – for agreements with China to industrialise Argentina and not only serve Chinese interests,” Restivo said.

Above and beyond these uncertainties, ambassador Yang Wanming hopes for more: “To promote a higher level in the strategic integral alliance” between Beijing and Buenos Aires.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

“Today we are all Nisman” - demonstrators demand justice for the death of prosecutor Natalio Alberto Nisman in the Plaza de Mayo in front of the presidential palace in Argentina during a Jan. 19 protest convened over the social networks. His murder shook the entire nation. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 21 2015 (IPS)

The death of a special prosecutor investigating one of the biggest unresolved mysteries in the history of Argentina, the bombing of a Jewish community centre over 20 years ago, has put to the test an immature democracy that is caught up in a web of conspiracy theories and promiscuity between the secret services and those in power.

The victim was Natalio Alberto Nisman, found dead Sunday Jan. 18, the day before he was to present to Congress alleged evidence that President Cristina Fernández had taken part, according to him, in a cover-up of five Iranians suspected of involvement in the Jul. 18, 1994 attack on the AMIA building which left 85 dead and 300 wounded.

The scene of his death – which officials have described as occurring in mysterious circumstances that prompted the need to investigate whether he was pressured to kill himself, under threat – was his apartment in the Puerto Madero neighbourhood in the capital of Argentina.

“This mystery is similar to the story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ that Edgar Allan Poe published in 1841: doors locked from the inside, no balcony, on the 13th floor of an apartment building not accessible by any other means, the body collapsed on the floor of the bathroom blocking the door…one single shot to the temple and without the intervention of another person,” wrote journalist Horacio Verbitsky in the pro-government newspaper Página 12.

Argentines tend to turn to noir novels to describe their own history.

Among the highest-profile unresolved crimes is the disappearance of the hands of the embalmed corpse of former president Juan Domingo Perón in 1987, blamed on a ritual by the Masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2; an attempt to deal a blow to the country as it had recently returned to democracy in 1983; or an effort to symbolically destroy the cult surrounding the late leader who governed the country from 1946-1955 and 1973-1974.

But in the current global scenario and not so long after the 1976-1983 military dictatorship, which left 30,000 people “disappeared”, the prosecutor’s death has revived the sensation of vulnerability and “déjà vu”, with ingredients from a modern-day police novel.

“We’re all vulnerable. Today they came for him, tomorrow they’ll come for us,” Rita Vega, a teacher, told IPS while taking part in a Jan. 19 protest in the Plaza de Mayo, the square in front of the presidential palace.

The demonstration was convened over the social networks under the theme “I am Nisman”, inspired by the “I am Charlie” campaign that followed the Jan. 7 attack on the French satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

“Argentine democracy, which is entering its 32nd year, is solid and peaceful enough to weather blows like the one dealt by the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman,” international analyst Martín Granovsky told IPS.

His death has once more divided Argentine society, between those who from the political opposition blame the centre-left Fernández administration for Nisman’s death and government supporters who say the prosecutor committed suicide because he didn’t have proof to back up his accusations, or was “induced” to kill himself.

Ronald Noble, the head of Interpol until late 2014, refuted Nisman’s accusations (based on wiretaps) that the president and officials close to her had asked for the cancellation of international arrest warrants against five Iranians suspected of involvement in the 1994 attack on AMIA, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina Jewish community centre.

On Jan. 14, Nisman accused Fernández of a cover-up aimed at “forging closer relations with the Iranian regime and fully reestablishing trade ties to ease Argentina’s severe energy crisis, through a swap of oil for grains.”

Granovsky, the analyst, said “The AMIA case has a basic problem: when Carlos Menem was president (1989-1999), the state did not carry out an in-depth investigation into the bombing in the first few days, and in addition the complicities generated by the security forces’ side business dealings stood in the way of a serious probe.”

The president brought up that hypothesis, in her first statement on Nisman’s death, through Facebook, stressing that it “suggestively” happened just before the start of the trial for the cover-up of the attack, in which Menem, a former intelligence chief and others are implicated.

The head of the lower house of parliament, lawmaker Julián Domínguez of the governing Frente para la Victoria, said “we want to know what event or what mafioso sector prompted Mr. Nisman to take the decision he took.

“We are certain that there are segments of the intelligence community, the last redoubt that democracy has not yet been able to penetrate, seeking to create signs of instability and to pressure judges,” he said.

In December, the government removed Antonio ‘Jaime’ Stiuso as director of operations in the Intelligence Secretariat.

The ties between Stiuso and Nisman were well-known, and according to government leaks it was Stiuso who made the prosecutor come back early from his vacation in Europe in the middle of the judicial break to make his presentation to the legislature on Monday Jan. 19.

Néstor Pitrola, a legislator with the Workers’ Party, which forms part of the opposition Frente de Izquierda (Left Front), pointed out that Nisman was named special prosecutor in the AMIA case by late president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007), Fernández’s predecessor and husband. But “a political shift created an internal war in the justice system and the intelligence services,” he said.

According to Pitrola, the prosecutor’s death revealed the presence of “an intelligence state within the state.

“Three weeks before Nisman made his allegations, the intelligence services were beheaded to the benefit of a new intelligence clique, led by (César) Milani, a repressor during the dictatorship who has been questioned by the justice system,” he said.

Atilio Borón, a former executive secretary of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), said Nisman’s death especially hurts the government, which is the most interested in disproving the prosecutor’s supposed evidence, in a year when both presidential and legislative elections are to be held.

“He was a man who was very mixed up with the services, people you don’t play around with. You don’t fool with the CIA (U.S. Central Intelligence Agency), you don’t play with the Mossad (Israel’s secret service). He took instructions from them; you can see the Wikileaks cables, which have never been refuted,” he said.

Borón also said the international context, “what some call the West’s war against Islam,” should not be ignored.

In that vein, Gustavo Sierra, a journalist with the opposition daily Clarin, referred to “speculations of international intelligence” on the role that Iranian agents or their allies might have played in the prosecutor’s “induced” death, because he might have hurt their interests.

“Could Iranian intelligence have induced Nisman to commit suicide by threatening to kill one of his daughters, who lives in Europe? Did they have compromising information that implicated the prosecutor? Did they manage to make it through the Puerto Madero apartment building’s security barrier using some agent who was able to make it look like a suicide, without being detected?” Sierra wrote.

The plot is too complex, and even the mystery that gave rise to it has never been resolved: who was responsible for the worst attack suffered by Argentina, in a saga that Fernández described as “too long, too heavy, too hard, and above all, very sordid.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Argentine President Cristina Fernández addressing supporters in a courtyard in the government palace on Jul. 31, after giving a speech to the nation to explain the country’s debt payment situation. Credit: Casa Rosada

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 4 2014 (IPS)

Argentina’s supposed “default”, an unprecedented case in the history of world capitalism, sets a legal, political and financial precedent that indicates the need for concrete measures regarding the fine line between legal, ethical business activities and criminal usury.

In the debate, the orthodox financial sectors say Argentina’s failure to comply with U.S. Judge Thomas Griesa’s ruling means it has once again defaulted, while others argue that it has actually honoured its commitments and made its payments, and the fact that the funds have not reached the creditors is not the government’s fault.

“Preventing someone from paying is not default,” said President Cristina Fernández in a Jul. 31 nationally televised address, after a meeting with the so-called vulture funds – opportunistic investors who purchase the debt of heavily indebted countries at pennies to the dollar and then vigorously pursue full repayment in court – which failed to come up with a solution to the conflict.

“Now they invented a new term: ‘selective default’. It doesn’t exist. Preventing someone from taking our payments is not default. I told them they would have to invent a new word,” she said with irony.

At a Jul. 30 meeting in New York with Argentine officials, the mediator named by the U.S. court, Daniel Pollack, rejected Argentina’s offer to restructure the debt in the hands of “holdout” creditors – those who did not agree to the 2005 or 2010 debt swaps.

Since Argentina defaulted on nearly 100 billion dollars in debt in late 2001, during the worst economic crisis in the country’s history, 92.4 percent of the bonds have been restructured at a deep discount, with lower interest rates and at longer terms.

But a group of hedge funds that refused to participate in the two debt restructurings sued for full payment of 1.3 billion dollars in Argentine bonds in federal court in New York.

The offer made by Argentina in the Jul. 30 negotiations was for the holdouts to restructure their debt in conditions similar to those accepted earlier by the vast majority of creditors – under late president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) in 2005, and under his successor and widow Fernández in 2010.

Jul. 30 was the deadline to pay 539 million dollars in interest due on the discount bonds.

The Fernández administration had deposited the funds with the bond trustee, the Bank of New York Mellon (BoNY Mellon). But Judge Griesa blocked the payments to the bondholders because the Argentine government ignored his order to also pay the hedge funds.

”Unfortunately, no agreement was reached and the Republic of Argentina will imminently be in default,” Pollack said after the meeting in New York. “Default is not a mere ‘technical’ condition, but rather a real and painful event that will hurt real people.”

In an Aug. 1 court hearing, Argentina’s representatives unsuccessfully demanded that Pollack be removed as mediator, because of his remarks.

Some credit rating agencies lowered the rating on Argentina’s foreign currency bonds to “selective default”, while the judge avoided using that term in the Aug. 1 hearing but said it was clear that there had been no payments.

Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof said “Argentina is not in default, because it has already paid. The bondholders did not pick up their payments because of a ban put in place by Judge Griesa.

“They talk about technical default, selective default — some have called it Griesa default, Griefault. No one knows what to call it because it is new, because it doesn’t exist, because no one would have thought that a judge could come along, and say – after the payment – ‘I’m going to order the banks to not meet their contracts.’ ”

Alejandro Drucaroff, a lawyer who specialises in banks and finance, pointed out to IPS that the debt swaps accepted by the vast majority of creditors “involved major discounts of capital and interest and very long terms for repayment.” But he also stressed that Argentina has punctually met all of its payments.

Some of the holdouts – the 7.6 percent of the creditors, who refused to accept the swaps that offered about 35 cents on the dollar – sold their bonds to hedge funds, two of which later sued in federal court in New York for full payment of 1.3 billion dollars in bonds, roughly one percent of the total debt.

The vulture funds acquired the bonds in 2008 at 20 to 30 percent of their nominal value.

In 2012 Judge Griesa ordered Argentina to pay the bonds at full-face value, plus interest and fees – some 1.5 billion dollars.

On Jun. 16, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the Argentine government, thus upholding the earlier ruling, which banned Argentina from making payments on the restructured debt unless it also paid the holdouts.

“That ban, which has no legal basis and goes beyond the judge’s legal authority, has no practical effect because Argentina met its payments anyway,” Drucaroff said.

But after BoNY Mellon was “warned” by Griesa that transferring the money to bondholders would violate his ruling, the bank held on to the funds.

“Griesa does not have the authority to keep Argentina from paying its debts to third parties not involved in the trial. Nor does he have authority over funds that aren’t from the U.S. – he can’t embargo them,” Drucaroff argued.

“There is no default; what this is, is an absolutely unprecedented legal situation,” the lawyer added.

“BoNY should be held accountable by the 92.4 percent of creditors and by Argentina for failing to comply with its function,” he said. “It could argue that it acted the way it did because it could be found guilty of contempt of court as a result of Griesa’s ruling – and in my opinion, in that case Griesa would also be responsible for preventing the money from reaching the creditors.”

According to University of Buenos Aires economist Fernanda Vallejos, the wording in the contracts makes it clear that a default would only occur “if Argentina didn’t pay.”

“However, the country not only has the will and the capacity to pay, but it has already paid and will continue to do so,” she added.

That, in her view, is independent of the credit rating agencies, “which in their eagerness to pave the way for the vulture funds to do business, because of the payment of default insurance, invent terms like ‘selective default’, which have nothing to do with reality or with Argentina’s financial solvency.”

The problem, the Argentine government says, are not the 1.5 billion dollars that the judge and the plaintiff are demanding payment of, but the fact that the debt would skyrocket if the bondholders that accepted a discount sued for repayment at full value as well.

The government said the debt could climb as high as 500 billion dollars in that case, which would throw the country back into a crisis similar to the one that triggered the 2001 default in the first place.

Political analyst Alejandro Horowicz said: “A plunge in our foreign reserves of that magnitude would not only affect international trade but would make the fixed exchange rate impossible to control and hence the rest of the reserves would face the same fate and would end up fleeing in a vain attempt to curb the stampede in the price of the dollar.”

Vallejo warned that the U.S. court ruling discouraged any process of debt restructuring by favouring “a small minority who represent the most savage face of international financial capital.”

“Who would accept a restructuring like Argentina’s if by bringing legal action in the courts of any country you can get that level of returns and repayment at full face value?” she asked.

The economist said an international regulatory framework is needed “that would preserve debt restructuring processes and put limits on the complete deregulation of the financial markets which trod roughshod over states and subjugate people.”

Vulture funds are already under scrutiny from governments and international bodies, among which there is a growing consensus that they should be reined in.

Nearly all of them “were involved in the latest international financial crisis [which broke out in 2008] by means of a range of speculative maneuvers that in many cases were actually illegal,” Drucaroff said.

“In theory a large part of the ‘formal’ financial system rejects them and sees them as running counter to business ‘ethics’. But no concrete step has been taken to curtail their activities which, to a large extent, are carried out through tax havens,” he said.

An area in which the question of whether Argentina defaulted or not is just one tip of the iceberg.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Argentine President Cristina Fernández at army chief César Milani’s promotion to lieutenant general in a Dec. 19 ceremony in the government palace. Credit: Presidencia de Argentina

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Jan 8 2014 (IPS)

The ratification as Argentina’s army chief of an officer accused of involvement in crimes against humanity during the 1976-1983 dictatorship has revived the debate about the thin line between the moral and judicial responsibility of those let off the hook by an amnesty law for merely “following orders”.

The Argentine Senate approved Major General César Milani’s promotion to lieutenant general on Dec. 18, 2013, thus upholding his June appointment as army chief of staff despite the shadows cast over his past, when he served as second lieutenant in the northern province of La Rioja during the military regime.

On Jan. 3, Milani resigned as director-general of army intelligence. The fact that he had continued to hold that post after he was named head of the army had fanned the controversy about him and his unprecedented power as both chief of staff and head of intelligence.

Milani claims he did not know what was happening in La Rioja Battalion 141, where he was deployed during the dictatorship.

But journalist Guillermo Alfieri, who was held as a political prisoner in La Rioja from 1976 to 1980, doesn’t believe him. “Milani isn’t showing the naïveté of Heidi [the character in the classic Swiss children’s novel] but the hypocrisy of Tartuffe [the opportunistic imposter in Molière’s famous comedy],” he told IPS.

Argentina’s last military dictatorship left 30,000 dead and forcibly disappeared, and 500 children were stolen from political prisoners, according to human rights groups.

Milani argues that he was young and was following orders, and says he was not aware of the human rights abuses taking place in that province.

But he is implicated in three lawsuits brought by families of victims of the dictatorship.

One of them involves the disappearance of La Rioja conscript Alberto Ledo.

Milani signed a document stating that Ledo had deserted his battalion. The young soldier was last seen in 1976 in the northern province of Tucumán, during Operation Independence, which ended in generalised repression under the pretext of eliminating a guerrilla group.

In his autobiography “Ver de memoria”, Alfieri describes the repression in La Rioja as “state terrorism”.

He said he met Ledo because they had friends in common in La Rioja, and described him as “a friendly, respectful and respected young man who loved history, was a musician who kept gatherings lively, and had left-wing ideas that he expressed with restraint.”

Human rights groups say Ledo is another victim of forced disappearance.

Milani’s promotion was approved by 39 to 30 votes in the Senate, after his designation in June as army chief of staff by the left-leaning government of Cristina Fernández, which invoked the presumption of innocence.

“I cannot, on the basis of mere suspicions, execute or lynch a general,” argued Senator
Aníbal Fernández (no relation to the president) of the governing Frente para la Victoria.

Human rights organisations and 1980 Nobel Peace Prize-winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel considered Milani’s appointment a setback, because it revived the argument of “due obedience,” the name of a 1987 law that protected from prosecution lower-ranking members of the military under the concept that they were following orders.

Milani’s designation as army chief shocked the public because the governments of late former president Néstor Kirchner (2003-2007) and his wife and successor Fernández took a proactive stance on human rights.

They promoted the repeal of the 1980s amnesty laws and backed the trials against human rights violators. Since 2003, 515 human rights abusers have been sentenced.

“It offends me that the government is protecting and promoting a member of that criminal apparatus, which tried to write Ledo off as a deserter,” Alfieri complained.

The Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS), a prominent human rights group, objected to Milani’s appointment in July, because of his alleged participation in human rights abuses.

The military chief asked to explain himself to CELS, which has been behind the trials of human rights violators, and in response to a questionnaire he argued on Dec. 13 that in La Rioja the repression was “passive and low-intensity.”

But Alfieri said that La Rioja actually had “the largest number of [political prisoners] in the country, in proportion to the number of inhabitants in the province.”

“In La Rioja an intense witch hunt was unleashed, with systematic torture, hellish transfers and prisons turned into concentration camps,” he said.

“Even the gymnasium in Engineers Battalion 141 was used to warehouse detainees in bulk in the early days of the dictatorship,” he said, adding that there was no way that Milani hadn’t known what was going on.

Political and social allies of President Fernández have criticised Milani’s promotion.

They question what lawmaker Gabriela Cerruti of the Nuevo Encuentro party, a government ally, defined as “the threshold between judicial, political, moral and social guilt.”

The head of CELS, journalist Horacio Verbitsky, said Milani’s appointment was “a serious political error,” although he stressed that “asserting that this invalidates the human rights policy of the last decade reveals a deliberate bias.”

Political analyst and writer Alejandro Horowicz, author of the book “Los cuatro peronismos”, argued that it was important to go back to “the operating logic and patterns of the military repression.

“Irregular combatants had no rights, they could be tortured, raped and killed, and the perpetrators did not have to take responsibility for their own behaviour,” he told IPS.

According to Horowicz, by using “task forces” for fighting the guerrillas, the chain of command was suspended or subordinated to the heads of the operations.

In his view, Milani’s appointment should be understood in the context of the different approaches to “personal responsibility” in trying crimes against humanity.

“The first approach relegates the institutional character of each personal behaviour, to scrutinise the actions of the incriminated person,” he said.

“In the second, since everyone is innocent until proven guilty, the officers who have not been tried are innocent in an institution that is not,” he said.

“The third is that those who do not hold highly visible positions go unnoticed and are concealed by the broad mantle of the lack of legal charges,” he said.

Horowicz said the fact that Milani says he supports democracy “does not mean much politically” and his declaration to CELS “indicates that he is not willing, like the rest of officialdom, to take responsibility for anything.”

That would lead, he said, to a deeper analysis about “the democratic reconstitution of a military force in decomposition.”

“All you have to do is look at the behaviour of the armed forces throughout all these years, even after the repeal of the due obedience and full stop [a 1986 amnesty law that set a 60-day deadline for bringing legal charges in cases involving human rights violations] laws, to confirm that there is a willingness to do more of the same,” he said.

It also helps, he said, “to comprehend that it’s not about the names of individuals but about a decisive absence: of a genuinely democratic policy in the armed forces.”

The still unanswered question, he said, is why a government committed to human rights would decide to pay that political cost.

Was it a political error? Or perhaps, said Alfieri, a key move in guaranteeing governability at a moment of political crisis over allegations of corruption, a high inflation rate and police uprisings staged on the pretext of demands for a raise?

Perhaps the answers have to do with Fernández’s growing trust in Milani since he became head of military intelligence.

In the face of the lack of explanations, “speculation ranges between stubbornness, a strategy of turning the army into a nest of spies, and the unrealised dream of getting the military to align with popular sectors to promote the general welfare,” Alfieri said.

In any case it’s a double-edged sword, according to Horowicz, because “it diminishes the government’s manuevering room during crises.”

President Cristina Fernández expanded anti-poverty measures after succeeding her husband Néstor Kirchner. Credit: Presidencia de Argentina

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, May 27 2013 (IPS)

In the 10 years since late president Néstor Kirchner, who was succeeded by his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2007, first took office in Argentina, poverty has fallen, employment has climbed and educational coverage has expanded, although there is no agreement on the exact statistics.

Just how much poverty has been reduced is in dispute. But in any case the poverty level has gone down in the past decade of Kirchner governments, say experts and activists who talked to IPS.

“We are closer than ever to zero hunger, although there are still malnourished kids,” said the leader and founder of the Red Solidaria (Solidarity Network), Juan Carr.

Hunger, floods, extreme cold, epidemics, the need for an urgent transplant are some of the social problems addressed by the Red Solidaria, an NGO that has a network of volunteers around the country.

“Poverty makes people in Argentina feel indignant,” Carr said. “But this attitude is a new thing, since about 15 years ago. That wasn’t true before. Only the most progressive people were concerned about poverty. Today everyone is. But the way some people look at it is a little immature. Many get angry.”

In his interview with IPS, Carr was careful to steer clear of the heated dispute between spokespersons of the centre-left Fernández administration and the opposition on whether or not the poverty rate is going down. In his view, the statistics are neither as good nor as bad as the two sides would have people think.

The poverty rate in Argentina had soared to 54 percent in late 2001, when the severe economic crisis triggered massive street protests. A brutal police crackdown on the protests left dozens of demonstrators dead and injured, prompting then president Fernando de la Rúa to step down.

Kirchner, who died in October 2010 at the age of 60, became president on May 25, 2003 after a series of caretaker presidents, and since then the poverty rate has steadily fallen.

According to the latest figure released by the National Statistics and Census Institute (INDEC), from late 2012, 5.4 percent of Argentina’s 40 million people are poor.

But the opposition and some experts have called INDEC’s figures into question since the executive branch increased its involvement in the statistics body in 2007. They argue that INDEC’s numbers are based on an artificially low estimate of the cost of the basic food basket, which purportedly does not take into account the real inflation rate.

For example, studies presented by the private Catholic University of Argentina put the poverty rate at almost 27 percent.

Statistics on unemployment also vary. According to official figures, it plunged from 24 percent in 2002 to 16.3 percent in 2003, and to 7.9 percent today.

But these numbers are also questioned.

Carr said he believes the real poverty rate is “somewhere in the middle.”

“It doesn’t seem to affect 30 percent, but not just five percent either. I think a reasonable assumption would be that one out of five people in Argentina are still poor,” he said.

With respect to the fight against poverty, the activist mentioned “two glorious moments” in the last decade.

One was in 2003, when agriculture began to recover and the government had “very good” social policies. “Food started to really be produced on a large scale then, which led to a major reduction in the deaths of children under six from problems related to malnutrition,” he said.

The second was in 2009, when the Universal Child Allowance (AUH) was introduced by the Fernández administration. “At least 500,000 people were pulled out of extreme poverty in just a few months,” he said.

The AUH, adopted halfway through Fernández’s first term, is a cash transfer to parents who are unemployed or work in the informal sector of the economy. It was later expanded to the children of domestics, pregnant women, low-earning members of cooperatives, and disabled people of any age.

The allowance, which is received by 1.8 million families of more than 3.3 million children and adolescents, is conditional on school attendance and keeping up-to-date on vaccines and medical checkups.

The allowance is 340 pesos (65 dollars) per month per child under 18. But in June it will increase to 460 pesos (88 dollars).

The living conditions of middle-class families who had fallen into poverty also improved over the last decade. In some cases, in fact, their lives made a complete turnaround.

Guillermo Mesa, who is 46 today, had a good job driving his own taxi in the late 1990s. He became one of the victims of the 2001-2002 crisis. “I lost everything,” he told IPS. After he was left without a job, his marriage fell apart in just a few months.

“The wave of car theft began at that time,” he said. “I lost mine, and when the insurance money came in, it wasn’t enough for me to buy anything.”

He was referring to the devaluation of the Argentine peso in early 2002.

“For two months I couldn’t find any work. I did some odd jobs here and there. I got some work driving a ‘remis’ (hired car). But the whole situation broke up my marriage. I had a one-year-old daughter and a 12-year-old son,” he said.

In 2003, Mesa decided to complete secondary school. “After that, I started taking plumbing and electrical courses,” he said.

He took the classes at one of the Education Ministry’s vocational training centres, in Buenos Aires. “I eventually had a lot of work and even had to hire a few young guys.”

In 2008, the Central de Trabajadores de Argentina trade union opened skills training centres, and hired him as a teacher. “I took the class to become an instructor, and now I teach electrician classes to people over 16.”

He is happy because he is enrolled in the social security system and receives full labour benefits – paid vacation, annual bonus and medical insurance. He is now studying to become a librarian. “I’ll be done next year, and I want to get a certificate to teach math in high school,” he said.

Mesa has never been able to buy his own home. He never managed to buy another car, either. But he remarried, and his son is in the university. “It was hard, but I was lucky. Now it’s easier to find work, and if you study, that helps a lot,” he said.

Comprehensive judicial reforms pushed by the government of Argentina on the argument that they will democratise the justice system are moving ahead in Congress in the midst of staunch resistance by the opposition, heated debate, and threats of future lawsuits challenging them as unconstitutional.

The package of laws presented Apr. 9 by centre-left President Cristina Fernández includes six changes aimed, as she said, at “making the country’s most important branch of power – because it is the last place where the life, freedom and patrimony of Argentina’s 40 million people are decided on – more modern and transparent.”

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Senate approved two changes that will now become law: the creation of three new appellate courts, to ease the backlog of cases that reach the Supreme Court; and regulations of court injunctions, a tool used to prevent irreparable damages to people or entities by a new law.

Another change that was approved by both the lower and upper houses but must return to the Senate for another vote would expand and change the process for the designation of the members of the magistrates’ council, which appoints and removes judges.

Three changes that made it through the Chamber of Deputies and now go to the Senate involve open competitions for jobs in the judicial branch; a requirement that the wealth declarations of judicial, and not just executive and legislative authorities, be published online; and a requirement that all federal court rulings be published online.

The opposition parties in Congress refused to set forth complementary ideas, arguing that the aim of the reforms is to increase government control over the judiciary, and saying they pose a threat to the country’s institutions.

One of the most heavily debated reforms was the one that would regulate and set deadlines for the application of indefinite court injunctions, which often keep laws from going into effect for years. This change became law after incorporating modifications proposed by civil society organisations.

When she presented the reforms, Fernández said that through the “abusive” use of court injunctions, the Grupo Clarín media group had failed to comply with the media law in effect since 2010, by challenging the law in court.

But human rights, environmental and labour groups warned that setting deadlines for injunctions would go against a number of citizen rights, especially the rights of the most vulnerable segments of society.

In response to these criticisms, ruling party lawmakers agreed to create an exception for the setting of deadlines, when “the dignified living conditions, health, or a right that involves food or the environment” of socially vulnerable sectors are under threat.

Also criticised was the proposal to expand the number of members of the magistrates’ council, from 13 to 19, and in particular, the article stating that the members must be elected by popular vote.

“The problem here is that a judge that wants to run for the council would have to campaign alongside political parties,” Álvaro Herrero, a lawyer with the Civil Rights Association, told IPS.

The council is currently made up of one member named by the executive branch, three judges, two representatives of lawyers’ associations, one academic, two senators and two deputies representing the largest party in each house of Congress, and one senator and one deputy representing the second largest party.

Most of the reforms approved by the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday will go back to the Senate.

But the second reform that will become law was the creation of three new appeals courts, to handle administrative, civil and commercial, and labour and social security cases. There is currently only one appeals court at that level.

The idea is to keep so many cases from accumulating before the Supreme Court.

The governing faction, the centre-left Front for Victory in the Justicialista (Peronist) Party, was confident that it could muster the votes needed to quickly pass the six reform bills.

But it ran into resistance by the opposition and criticism by civil society and academic organisations.

The debates thus raged on, with the governing party legislators and their allies incorporating changes and adding clauses suggested by human rights associations, legal experts and academics.

Despite the modifications, the right-wing, centre-right and centre-left opposition, backed by street demonstrations, did not accept any of the proposed reforms.

“The government is attempting the final assault on the judicial branch,” argued Mario Negri of the centrist Radical Civic Union.

Deputy Francisco De Narváez of the right-wing faction of the Peronists warned that “Argentina’s institutions are in a situation of extreme danger.”

Raúl Ferreyra, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Buenos Aires, said “the reform has two faces.”

“I see some good things and some very bad things” in the proposed reforms, he said in an interview with IPS.

“I really don’t like this debate that took place in just a few hours,” he said, although he insisted that there were positive aspects in the proposed reforms.

He was referring to the requirements that wealth declarations and court rulings be published online, and to the open competitions for hiring judicial personnel based on their merits, rather than connections and nepotism.

Ferreyra lamented, however, that the reforms did not resolve the question of better access to the justice system by ordinary citizens. He also said the regulation of the court injunctions, even with the added modifications, “leaves the most vulnerable without protection.”

In addition, the academic questioned the creation of new appeals courts as “unnecessary” and said they would only slow down the handling of cases.

But he agreed with the modifications of the magistrates’ council. “It shouldn’t shock us that in a hyperpresidentialist system, a president would come up with this kind of reform,” he said.

Ferreyra said that, despite the wide criticism, the judicial reforms “are legitimate” because they are backed by a president who was reelected with 54 percent of the vote.

“For the first time in 30 years, they want to discuss a reform of the judiciary, and that’s a good thing,” he said.

But the opposition legislators most vociferously opposed to the reforms said they would challenge their constitutionality, once they are passed into law.

The leaders of South America’s Mercosur trade bloc decided to set up a committee to facilitate the incorporation of new members, adopt a mechanism to defend democracy in case of a coup, and ban vessels from the Malvinas/Falkland Islands from docking in member countries’ ports.

Mercosur leaders express solidarity with Argentina's historic claim to the Malvinas/Falkland Islands. Credit: Office of the Uruguayan president

At Tuesday’s summit, the presidents of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay also signed a free trade agreement with Palestine, seen as mainly symbolic, and expanded the list of products from outside the bloc that will pay import tariffs.

In their speeches, the Mercosur (Southern Common Market) leaders acknowledged the contradictions and hurdles faced by the region’s largest trade bloc, while stressing the need to continue to forge ahead with the process of integration.

At the bloc’s headquarters in Montevideo, host President José Mujica met Cristina Fernández of Argentina, Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, as well as Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Rafael Correa of Ecuador, whose countries are in the process of joining as full members.

“Our path is full of contradictions and difficulties,” Mujica said. “Woe to us if the contradictions disillusion us and we abandon this project. We would soon become a leaf in the wind, in this world of colossal forces.”

The Uruguayan president emphasised that the bloc represents not only economic, but political, integration. “Without politics, there will be no Mercosur in the long run, and there will be no convergence, because this is not only an economic equation.

“Alas for us if we fail to understand that the underlying issue is a question of power, and that this question makes it necessary to move towards convergence,” he said.

Mujica also confirmed the creation of a high-level committee to analyse the admission of Venezuela and Ecuador as full members.

Venezuela, whose admission process began in 2006, is only awaiting approval by the Paraguayan Congress, where legislators opposed to the left-leaning Lugo hold a majority. For its part, Ecuador formally requested full membership on Tuesday.

Chávez said the incorporation of his country as a fifth full member has been blocked “by just five lawmakers” in Paraguay.

“These people who have been opposing (Venezuela’s admission) for five years, I don’t know if they are aware of the harm they are causing, not to Venezuela, but to everyone, to the Paraguayan people themselves,” he said. “There are only five people who don’t want it. I think that behind them there must be a very powerful hand, moving who knows what mechanisms of pressure,” he maintained.

Chávez underlined that Venezuela’s incorporation would mean “opening Mercosur to the Pacific.

“We are members of OPEC (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Companies), we have gas and energy reserves, we have things to contribute,” he added. “We have to expedite this, spurred on by the global crisis that is threatening us.”

Lugo also referred to the case of Venezuela and the resistance put up by a handful of legislators in his country.

“This government of Paraguay is respectful of its institutions, but it is making an effort to strengthen integration. The incorporation of Ecuador and Venezuela would work in favour of our bloc,” he said.

Rousseff, meanwhile, highlighted the agreement reached at the summit “to expand the list of products included in the common foreign tariff” applied to imports from outside Mercosur, and to adopt various mechanisms to foment intra-bloc trade.

Correa, for his part, stressed the signing of the “Montevideo Protocol”, a mechanism providing for a mutual response in defence of democratic institutions in case of a coup d’etat in any of the member countries.

The summit agenda, which was to include public ceremonies, such as the signing of the agreement with Palestine – signed in private in the end – was interrupted by the tragic news of the death of Argentina’s deputy trade secretary, 33-year-old Iván Heyn. The newly appointed official was found hanged in his room in the Montevideo hotel where most of the Argentine delegation was staying. The police said his death appeared to be a suicide, but that the investigation continued.

When Fernández was notified, she was so upset that her private doctor was called to attend to her.

Malvinas/Falklands

The summit also approved a resolution to close the bloc’s ports to vessels flying the Falkland Islands flag. The islands, known as the Malvinas in Argentina, have been held by Britain since the 1830s, and were the subject of a brief war between the two countries in 1982, when Argentina sought to assert its sovereignty over them.

In a column posted on the Uruguayan president’s web site Tuesday, Mujica explained his decision to ban the boats from docking in Uruguay, arguing that his country’s foreign policy has always been based on national interests, but also on the principle of solidarity with the region.

Mujica said solidarity with Buenos Aires also benefited Montevideo. “Uruguay’s political history shows that every time relations with Argentina have soured, the economy and labour have been enormously impaired,” he wrote.

Fernández expressed her appreciation for the member countries’ decision to block boats from the Malvinas.

The Malvinas “are not just an Argentine cause, but a global cause, because (the British) are taking oil and fishing resources, and when they need more resources, whoever is the strongest will go to find them whenever and however,” she said, as Rousseff nodded.

“When they sign something involving the Malvinas, they are doing so as if the Malvinas belonged to them. There are many countries here with great natural wealth, and this wealth must be defended. Let’s be smart enough to understand that, by taking care of each other, we are taking care of ourselves,” she added.

At the end of the summit, Mujica handed over the rotating six-month presidency of the bloc to Fernández.