Stories that caught our eye: August 9 to 16

FABIOLA’S ALLEGATIONS AGAINST ALBERTO

Former first lady Fabiola Yáñez is escalating her legal drive against ex-president Alberto Fernández, presenting herself at the Argentine Consulate in Madrid for over four hours on Monday morning to request recognition as a plaintiff in the gender violence case against her former partner and father of their son Francisco while expanding on her statements in the previous week, including such details as being forced into an abortion as well as excessive consumption of alcohol and marijuana in a “living hell” of conjugal life. Status as plaintiff would permit her full access to the casefile as well as the right to request evidence and appeal decisions which she considers unfavourable. Last June when first contacted by Federal Judge Julián Ercolini, Yáñez had been reluctant to prosecute Fernández but earlier this month amid a media uproar surrounding the case she proceeded to accuse him of “psychological terrorism” and harassment requiring psychological treatment on top of physical injuries accompanied by “abuse of power and authority” in a 20-page writ. Yáñez dates the start of the aggression all the way back to 2016, long before the presidential campaign which took Fernández to the Casa Rosada in 2019. The veteran Peronist not only denies the accusations but also accuses his ex-partner of assaulting him. By midweek the continuing uproar over gender violence had forced him to resign as Justicialist Party chairman on the same day Federal Prosecutor Ramiro González formally charged him with causing “grievous bodily harm.”

JULY INFLATION 4%

Last month’s inflation was four percent, the INDEC national statistics bureau reported on Wednesday, taking price rises so far this year up to 87 percent with an annual inflation of 263.4 percent. The increases were headed by restaurants and hotels (6.5 percent), alcoholic beverages and tobacco (6.1 percent due to hikes in cigarette taxation) and housing, water,electricity and other fuels (six percent owing to updates in public service billing and higher rents) while the key ítem of food and beverages undershot the average with 3.2 percent despite steep seasonal increases for fruit and vegetables. Core inflation (excluding seasonal and regulated prices) was 3.8 percent.

CRISTINA IN COURT (BUT NOT DOCK)

In court on Wednesday and for the first in the same room as the people who had tried to kill her on September 1, 2022, ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner testified that she “did not realise” a pistol had been pointed at her until after the event when Fernando Sabag Montiel, the main suspect, had already been arrested by her bodyguards. She also hinted that the responsibility extended far beyond the trio on trial since such situations could not arise “without coordination with the hegemonic media and the judicial branch, where the economic powers are concentrated,” describing the assassination attempt as a latterday coup d’état to thwart opposition to the “handover” of the country. “People cannot stand that a woman is right,” she said before adjourning to Instituto Patria think-tank to expand those ideas before ultra-loyalists in a one-hour pep talk.

BUS FARES HIKED

The cost of bus travel in the AMBA Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area was increased by 37 percent last Monday with the minimum fare going up from 270 to 371.13 pesos (and the maximum to 508.83 pesos for distances of over 27 kilometres). As from the start of the Javier Milei administration the minimum fare has thus sextupled from an initial 52.96 pesos. Despite the increase, AMBA fares remain the lowest in the country outside La Rioja. Discounts and reductions for taking multiple trips in the same travel window are also set to be scrapped on the orders of Economy Minister Luis Caputo.

GRANDMOTHERS HAMSTRUNG

The Javier Milei government has effectively dismantled a key part of the CONADI (Comisión Nacional por el Derecho a la Identidad) agency, at the forefront of the search for the children illegally adopted during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship since 1992, by a decree closing down its special investigation unit (UEI, in its Spanish acronym and created in 2004). “This is totally malign … an outrage to human rights,” Estela Barnes de Carlotto, the head of Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo told Página/12. The government drive against CONADI has been underway for some time with Security Minister Patricia Bullrich dismissing the commission as a militant organisation last May.

DENIALISM PUSHBACK

Human rights lawyer Javier Garin on Thursday sued President Javier Milei, Vice-President Victoria Villarruel and National Intelligence Academy director Juan Bautista ‘Tata’ Yofre for vindicating state terrorism, blasting the libertarían government as “pro-military and genocidal.” Meanwhile on the same day Father Javier Olivera Ravasi, who organised a controversial visit by six La Libertad Avanza deputies to military ex-officers convicted for crimes against humanity, was expelled from the diocese of Zarate-Campana for showing no repentance with his actions also disowned. The pastoral base of the ultra-conservative cleric, whose military father was convicted for crimes against humanity, is actually the diocese of San Rafael in Mendoza.

UNIVERSITIES ON STRIKE

University classes for the second half of the year failed to start last Monday when lecturers and non-academic staff went on strike to protest a pay increase offer of three percent plus a further two percent next month, which their trade unions considered to be way behind an inflation eroding over half their salaries. The stoppage was followed by protests falling short of a strike on Tuesday and Wednesday with a full two-day strike called for those same days next week.

PRIVATISATION KICKS OFF

Privatisation is off and running with the government calling a “transparent and competitive” tender with a maximum duration of six months for four hydroelectric plants (Alicurá, Chocón-Arroyito, Cerros Colorados and Piedra del Águila), published last Monday in Decree 718/2024 in the Official Gazette. Should the tender fall through, the plants will be run under Energy Secretary Eduardo Rodríguez Chirillo rather than ENARSA regulatory agency, as at present.

MORE LIBERTARIAN PURGES

The chronically rapid turnover in the Javier Milei government continued last week with the Border Guard and the Cults Secretariat as the latest targets. On Wednesday Cults Secretary Francisco Sánchez (previously a PRO deputy close to Security Minister Patricia Bullrich) was asked to resign, to be replaced by the youthful Buenos Aires provincial La Libertad Avanza caucus chief Nahuel Sotelo (a leading figure of the ultra-Catholic Frente Joven grouping linked to Opus Dei). The change was attributed to the excessive travel expenses of Sánchez – over five million pesos, US$1,085 and 7,184 euros for a total of six trips (four abroad) – but it might also have been due to some politically incorrect statements offending Pope Francis and bordering on anti-Semitism without openly repudiating them or a desire to advance Sotelo. On the previous day Bullrich via Decree 724/2024 bounced Border Guard chief Rosendo Ponce, whom she herself had picked earlier this year, in favour of Claudio Brilloni, a veteran with 38 years in the force, a move justified as “a process geared to improving operational capacity, boosting professional skills, making structures less bureaucratic and modernising equipment.”

RENT CONTRACTS EXEMPT

The AFIP tax bureau has eliminated the obligation to register rent contracts unless their parties perceive a benefit thereby, in which case they should declare the contracts to the RELI (Régimen de registración de contratos de locación de inmuebles) property contract register before September 30 or within a fortnight of drawing up the contract, it was published last Monday in the Official Gazette. Those who have already registered their contracts (around seven percent of the total or over 200,000 people) will not need to renew them except for the purposes of updating or other changes. Nor are employees obliged to attach a copy of their rent contract to their tax returns in order to obtain access to the corresponding tax deductions. This latest move forms part of a deregulation drive including repeal of the SIRA (Sistema de Importaciones de la República Argentina) system of import authorisation and an end to the obligation of farmers to submit five sworn statements annually together with the harvest.

A GAY OLD TIME IN PRISON

President Javier Milei posted a controversial message on social networks last Monday, describing prison life as matching up to socialist ideals by offering equality, free lodging, health and education, no need to work and “plenty of gay sex.” These disparaging remarks came in the same week in which Milei aggressively asserted his own heterosexual preferences by kissing the ex-starlet Amalia ‘Yuyito’ González in the mouth at a public event last Tuesday, prompting her to inform a television audience that she was now officially the President’s girlfriend. Hmmm.

CODES OF MISCONDUCT

A 15-year-old victim of sexual abuse identified her aggressor via a coded message to the City Police, who checked out her story and found the suspect to have falsified his Instagram profile, proceeding to arrest him. At the start of the investigation, the girl had been reluctant to talk to the police, initially blaming a schoolmate whose name she could not recall, but her stalker turned out to be an adult aged 21.

RIVER ETIHAD?

A government decree last Wednesday gives the AFA Argentine Football Association one year to amend its statutes and accept sporting corporations or limited companies (SAD in their Spanish acronym) in the professional league, banned until now. The move had already been rejected in anticipation by AFA and the vast majority of football clubs as belonging to their members not big business, but Deregulation & State Transformation Minister Federico Sturzenegger argued that those members were being given the choice of whether they wanted capital injections or not. This one looks set to run.