Stories that caught our eye: July 4 to 11

 

YELLOW TURNS PURPLE

Independence Day last Wednesday also saw formal announcement of PRO centre-right party’s assent to joining a front with La Libertad Avanza for the Buenos Aires provincial elections of September 7 after the four most intransigent of Buenos Aires Province’s 13 PRO mayors finally withdrew their opposition to the pact, despite the libertarians laying claim to the lion’s share of candidacies. The agreement was inked at the Hotel Libertador (Javier Milei’s bunker during his 2023 presidential campaign) at 1.30pm last Wednesday. On the other side Peronist unification came later that same day in the form of the agreement of its three main sectors and other allied forces to run together as the Fuerza Patria.

 

MILEI STAYS HOME

President Javier Milei on Wednesday suspended a trip to Tucumán to mark the 209th anniversary of Argentine independence declared there, pleading fog. But it was widely suspected that tension with provincial governors  resulting in only four of the 23 confirming their presence was the real reason. Vice-President Victoria Villarruel did travel north, however, without any problems.

 

HIGHWAY BOARD SHUTTERED

President Javier Milei’s chainsaw reached the Highway Board (Dirección Nacional de Vialidad) and two traffic safety agencies last Monday, as announced by presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni in his daily press conference. “Corruption in public works has just had its expiry date signed by President Javier Milei,” declared Adorni. As a result some 9,120 kilometres will be leased under new norms and controls. Adorni made sure to highlight the "irregularities in adjudicating highway contracts in Santa Cruz Province … with overpricing for the businessman Lázaro Báez," for which ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is now serving house arrest. Highway construction will now fall under the umbrella of the Transport Secretariat and the Economy Ministry, reportedly saving the state an estimated US$100 million with total savings over the last year amounting to US$2 billion, according to Adorni. 

 

MILEI PEP TALK

In his first Cabinet meeting since his year of delegated powers expired, President Javier Milei urged his ministers to cultural battle with a self-congratulatory: “We are the best government in history” while thanking the “unknown heroes” permitting him to be “the best President in Argentine history.” In a less frequent boast he also said: “We heartless liberals are the ones who have done the most for the most vulnerable.” Milei cited Chile as an example of what can happen if that battle is not fought despite good macro-economic numbers, saying that the populism of the “mental parasites” owed its success to the cultural battle. The Deregulation & State Transformation Ministry headed by Federico Sturzenegger celebrated the closures and mergers of several government departments earlier this week as its emergency powers expired.

 

YPF APPEAL

The government has appealed the ruling of the Manhattan judge Loretta Prezka who ordered 51 percent of YPF shares to be transferred to hedge funds to pay her sentence of US$16 billion for the irregular 2012 nationalisation of the company. The previous day the Treasury Prosecutor’s Office submitted two writs (one applying to Petersen/Eton Park and the other to Bainbridge) for suspension of the ruling, arguing that it was no ordinary commercial dispute and that the United States government disagreed with Prezka’s ruling, which obliged Argentina “to violate its own legislation” requiring Congress approval. They further argued that the case had yet to pass through appeals courts.

 

MODI IN TOWN

President Javier Milei last weekend received Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Casa Rosada officer during the latter’s brief stopover here en route to the 17 th summit of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), recently expanded to include other countries) in Brazil. Their Saturday encounter was the first bilateral formal meeting between leaders of the two countries since 1968 when Indira Gandhi was received by military president Juan Carlos Onganía although the two men had already met at the last G20 summit in Río de Janeiro. High on the agenda at the meeting (also attended by presidential chief-of-staff Karina Milei and Foreign Minister Gerardo Werthein) were agriculture, lithium and energy (both conventional and nuclear). The world’s most populous country, India is also its fifth-largest economy and has recently become the leading importer of Argentine soy within a bilateral trade volume of US$5 billion, assigned a high strategic value by the current administration.

 

MILEI IN CHACO

President Javier Milei travelled last weekend to the Chaco provincial capital of Resistencia to inaugurate Portal del Cielo (“Gates of Heaven”), the country’s biggest evangelical church with room for 15,000 people. Hosted by Chaco Province Radical Governor Leandro Zdero and accompanied by his sister, Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, Milei defended the ethos of capitalism and blasted the concept of social justice as a violation of property rights during a half-hour harangue. “In Argentina we have learned that those who distribute keep the best for themselves but luckily such people are starting to go to jail,” he said in a veiled allusion to ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The minister of Portal del Cielo is the Protestant pastor Jorge Ledesma, who claims to have witnessed “miracles,” like the conversion of 100,000 pesos into US$100,000 kept in a bank safe deposit box, telling his congregation and local media that money saved within the church as pesos became dollars after going more than a year untouched. Ledesma assures that his Iglesia Cristiana Internacional has a weekly congregation of some 30,000 people in Resistencia, as well as presence in over 50 countries.

 

ALBERTO INDICTED

Ex-president Alberto Fernández was formally indicted last Thursday for “business transactions incompatible with public office" in the Seguros case of the fraudulent allocation of state company insurance although he was not remanded in custody.

 

CAPUTO MISQUOTED?

There was a tempest in a teapot last Tuesday when presenter Alejandro Fantino revealed details of an “off-the-record” conversation with Economy Minister Luis Caputo warning of bad times ahead. Caputo insisted that he had said the opposite with country risk hitting four digits while the journalist said that leaked portions of the video had been taken out of context. Caputo even hinted at fake news via the abuse of artificial intelligence before rushing to the TV studios to put on a brave face.

 

PROTESTER RELEASED

Kirchnerite official Alesia Abaigar, who works in the Buenos Aires Province Women & Diversity Ministry, was freed last Monday by a ruling of the  San Martín Federal Appeals Court after serving house arrest since June 27 on charges of tossing excrement in front of the house of Lower House Budget Committee chairman José Luis Espert (La Libertad Avanza-Buenos Aires Province). The appeals court considered that she did not represent a flight risk. But last Wednesday San Isidro Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado hit back, ruling that Abaigar should stay under house arrest pending payment of a bail of 50 million pesos. In the preceding weekend three other persons accused of the attack were released from prison with Quilmes municipal councillor Eva Mieri the only one remaining detained, prompting Quilmes Mayor Mayra Mendoza to speak of "political persecution.” 

 

DEPUTY MALIGNED

Socialist deputy Esteban Paulón (Encuentro Federal-Santa Fe), a well-known activist for LGBT+ rights, accused government aggression of crossing the line when the libertarian influencer Daniel Parisini (better known as "Gordo Dan") and his chums accused him of being a paedophile in his streaming programme La Misa, before wishing AIDS on him. Paulón has lodged a lawsuit against the influencer who chose to repeat rather than retract his statements, also accusing President Javier Milei of similar hate speech. Several deputies rallied to Paulón’s defence, including all members of his Encuentro Federal caucus. 

 

FAKE LAWYER JAILED

Earlier this month the TOF (Tribunal Oral Federal) 8 court sentenced the pseudo-lawyer Marcelo D’Alessio to a prison term of 162 months on various charges, including four counts of extortion, money-laundering and illegal possession of a firearm. Five other defendants, including two intelligence agents, were also convicted for terms ranging from nine years in prison to a suspended sentence of three years. D’Alessio was already imprisoned at Ezeiza after having been sentenced in 2021 to four years in prison for trying to extort the businessman Gabriel Traficante.

 

DEAD WHALE IN RIVER PLATE

The corpse of a baby whale was found run aground off the coast of the Greater Buenos Aires district of Vicente López (La Lucila) by a fisherman last Wednesday with the Coast Guard rapidly sealing off the area until removal of the dead mammal. According to sources, the whale had been dead for at least two days.

 

FOOTBALL COMEBACKS

Plenty of football news last week despite a lack of matches played – on Tuesday Angel Di María made his return to Rosario Central, on Wednesday Carlos Tevez bécame the new trainer of Talleres de Córdoba and on Thursday Leandro Paredes (released from his contract with the Italian club Roma) joined the Boca Juniors squad. Also on the rumour mill: reports that Rodrigo De Paul will be leaving Atlético Madrid to join up with Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami.