Stories that caught our eye: November 24 to December 1

APPOINTMENTS AND DISAPPOINTMENTS

Upon his return from the United States on Wednesday president-elect Javier Milei confirmed Luis Caputo as his choice for the Economy Ministry although the Central Bank still remained undefined at press time. Earlier in the week he named Manuel Adorni, a financial consultant better known for his intense and controversial activity on social networks, as his future presidential spokesperson after the journalist and media personality Marina Calabró turned him down. But Milei will not have the same problems replacing Domestic Trade Secretary Matías Tombolini because he will simply close down his department, arguing: “Nobody has any business regulating prices, that seems an aberration to me” and affirming: “I’m going to liberate all the prices I can in the economy although some I cannot because of the time-bombs left by the government.” But several key appointments – such as the return of defeated Juntos por el Cambio presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich to the Security Ministry or the Congress Speaker with the libertarian caucus objecting to the choice being limited to PRO’s Cristian Ritondo or dissident Peronist Florencio Randazzo – remained unconfirmed at press time. Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stepped into the latter issue on Wednesday, saying that both houses of Congress should be headed by a member of the winning La Libertad Avanza party, just as she in 2015 had assented to PRO senator Federico Pinedo becoming the provisional president of the Upper House despite a continuing Peronist majority there.

IT’S OFFICIAL

Javier Milei and Victoria Villarruel were officially proclaimed Argentina’s next president and vice-president in an extremely brief Legislative Assembly session last Wednesday. The final official November 19 run-off tally saw La Libertad Avanza’s majority slightly reduced – the presidential ticket of Javier Gerardo Milei and Victoria Eugenia Nair Villarruel received 14,554,560 valid votes or 55.65 percent as against 11,598,720 votes (44.35 percent) for Sergio Tomás Massa and Agustín Oscar Rossi when the percentages on election night had been 55.69 and 44.31 percent respectively. The 24 new senators were also approved but will have to wait until next Thursday to swear in.

MILEI STATESIDE

President-elect Javier Milei spent the first half of last week in the United States, in New York (where his flying visit basically consisted of a pilgrimage to a Jewish shrine and lunch with former US two-term Democratic president Bill Clinton) and Washington, where he met up with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and top International Monetary Fund brass among others. Future Cabinet chief Nicolás Posse, future Economy minister Luis Caputo and US Ambassador Marc Stanley were leading members of his entourage. Before heading out, Milei confirmed that he would be calling extraordinary sessions of Congress to approve a massive state reform package.

MASSA GUARANTEES CHRISTMAS BONUSES

Economy Minister Sergio Massa on Wednesday guaranteed provincial governors that they would be able to pay this month’s wages and Christmas bonuses with the help of unused ATN (Aportes del Tesoro Nacional) Treasury contributions paid via Banco Nación without needing to touch the 2024 Budget. Accompanied by Interior Minister Eduardo ‘Wado’ de Pedro and Treasury Secretary Raúl Rigo, Massa signed an agreement with each province. Several provincial governors had sounded the alert as to the impossibility of paying Christmas bonuses after Massa’s campaign income tax cuts had made serious inroads into the pool of federal revenue-sharing funds while president-elect Javier Milei had suggested that the governors cut their spending elsewhere if they wanted to pay their employees because “there is no money (in the national government).” A total of 29 governors and governors-elect representing every province except Córdoba (with this city also missing) attended the meeting.

HOSTAGES IN GAZA

While other hostages including Argentines continued to be freed in the course of the week, Hamas announced on Wednesday that the youngest hostage of them all, 10-month-old Kfir Bibas, and his Argentine family had been killed in an Israeli air raid on the Gaza Strip although the Foreign Ministry had yet to confirm the deaths of Kfir, his four-year-old brother Ariel and their mother at press time.

NOT ALL QUIET ON JUDICIAL FRONT

Tuesday was a red-letter day in the legal sphere with the lower house's Impeachment Committee bringing 11 months of proceedings to an end and approving the impeachment of all four Supreme Court justices on several counts of malfeasance (with a last-minute switch of half a dozen deputies to ensure assent) while on the same day the City Federal Appeals Court re-opened the “K money-laundering route case” against Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the behest of the Bases Republicanas NGO. On the same day the Federal Criminal Cassation Court acquitted ex-president Mauricio Macri of illegal espionage on the families of the lost crew of the submarine ARA San Juan (sunk just over six years ago), defining the intelligence operations as routine surveillance to ensure presidential security. The combination of Tuesday court rulings drew some sarcastic comment from Vice-President Cristina Kirchner.

VILLARRUEL DIGS UP HER DAD’S DEATH

Less than a fortnight away from the vice-presidency, Victoria Villarruel joined her widowed mother Diana Destefani de Villarruel on Monday in denouncing the 2021 death certificate of her father in a Rosario hospital as "false" with the Covid-19 then ravaging the country used to cover up alleged malpractice. The case was first lodged six months ago but Villarruel has chosen to air the death of retired Army lieutenant-colonel Eduardo Marcelo Villarruel, a Malvinas war veteran, at this time. His body was never cremated so that an exhumation for the purposes of an autopsy remains possible.

ALBERTO RAPS SCIOLI

Outgoing President Alberto Fernández on Tuesday criticised Daniel Scioli for staying on as Argentine ambassador to Brasilia under the Javier Milei presidency by saying: "I don’t understand how he can represent the government of Alberto Fernández and Milei’s in the same way.” But future Foreign Minister Diana Mondino had asked Scioli to stay on precisely because he had managed smooth relations with both the contrasting administrations of Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva while also proving useful for "reestablishing" links with the latter after the libertarian Milei repeatedly insulted Lula during his campaign. As things now stand, Milei would need to clear Scioli’s continuation in the Senate.

ALBERTO, MAXIMO RAPPED

Esteban Echeverría Peronist Mayor Fernando Gray last Monday called for the resignations of President Alberto Fernández and deputy Máximo Kirchner as national and Buenos Aires provincial Justicialist Party chairmen respectively as “marshals of defeat.”

PICKETS ACT UP

Pickets were back on the warpath for the first time this month on Tuesday with leftist groupings blocking the Avenida 9 de Julio thoroughfare and causing downtown traffic chaos in order to press their demands for uninterrupted food supplies to soup kitchens and a Christmas bonus. The marchers made it clear that their protest was directed against the current government but they anticipated a return to action against the incoming Javier Milei libertarian government as well.

RAFAEL NAHUEL SENTENCE

Five Coast Guards were sentenced by a Bariloche court on Wednesday for the 2017 slaying of Mapuche youth Rafael Nahuel in an indigenous protest – Sergio Cavio of the Grupo Albatros special operations squad to five years in prison for aggravated homicide in using a firearm beyond legitimate self-defence while four others received 54-month sentences as participants. The Human Rights Secretariat had demanded life imprisonment. The trial concluded six years and four days after the crime.

CECILIA REMAINS

Investigators of the June femicide of Cecilia Strzyzowski in Chaco have revealed the remains found last October in a pig-sty belonging to picket leader Emerenciano Sena include a human rib.

BOCA ELECTIONS SUSPENDED

The Boca Juniors club elections due to be held tomorrow have been indefinitely suspended pending clarification of the club membership lists defining the electorate. The earliest date for the epic clash in which an opposition ticket of ex-minister Andrés Ibarra and ex-president Mauricio Macri is challenging the bid of current vice-president and Boca idol Juan Román Riquelme for the presidency is now December 17. Ibarra is charging that there could be as many as 13,364 instant members who have joined the club since 2021 without respecting the statutory period for application. Judge Alejandra Débora Abrevaya found enough evidence of irregularities to suspend the election.