If Juan Domingo Perón once explained his remarkable success by saying: “It’s not that we are so good but the others are worse,” this month’s developments have placed his movement on the wrong end of his theorem to the benefit of the Javier Milei Presidency. Ex-president Alberto Fernández is currently the centre of attention with all the accusations of wife-bashing and influence-trafficking in the assignment of commissions for state agency insurance swirling around him but all this is not only the tip of an iceberg with a long history – it comes simultaneously with other news items exposing Kirchnerite hypocrisy. These include Tuesday’s conviction of former Trade secretary Guillermo Moreno for fudging inflation and other data amid the ongoing tragedy of Venezuela where Kirchnerism remains incapable of denouncing the flagrant electoral fraud of its Bolivarian allies.
This moral bankruptcy of the main opposition is a vital lifeline for a government facing enormous difficulties in restructuring Argentina. A case could be made for this being a prime factor in Milei reaching the Presidency in the first place. A series of scandals culminating in such a technicolour outrage as Martín Insaurralde’s yacht shortly before the election but also including the millionaire bags of José López, the public works larceny of Lázaro Báez, the money embezzled from the Madres de Plaza de Mayo housing scheme and the pandemic abuses (both the 'VIP vaccination' abuses and the 'Olivosgate' birthday party scandal involving both protagonists of the marital spat now topping the news) among many others created a degree of public disgust making an alternative like Horacio Rodríguez Larreta or even the less moderate Patricia Bullrich insufficient. The glut of hypocrisy on the part of an inefficient and corrupt government created an appetite for brutal sincerity only satisfied by a “what you see is what you get” Milei with brutal austerity and a brutal recession the price.
Alberto Fernández has plunged into the doghouse less than eight months after leaving office but then his presidency was rooted in hypocrisy from the start – or what other explanation is there for the extreme inconsistency of his reconciliation with his running-mate, the unelectable ex-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (herself far from innocent as the author of that hodgepodge)? There is currently a rush to judgement against him denying his right to be considered innocent until proven guilty among public opinion or even within his own party but then the law professor’s past record robs him of the benefit of the doubt – successively blaming his wife for the outrageous birthday party and his secretary for the insurance scandal contradicts such ostentatious feminist militancy as legalising abortion and inclusive language.
Yet the double standards of the Kirchnerite movement extend far beyond Fernández. Starting with feminism where silence in his wife-bashing case might be excused by the presumption of innocence and the dubious credibility of the plaintiff but here once might be an accident but twice looks like carelessness, in the words of Oscar Wilde – similar reluctance to repudiate such fellow-travellers as Tucumán Province ex-governor José Alperovich, La Matanza Mayor Fernando Espinoza and the journalist Pedro Brieger, among others. Double standards also with Venezuela, as mentioned above, as well as with human rights where their opportunistic militancy dates from this century and not from the past when the crimes against humanity occurred.
The issue of gender violence has led many to forget that the gender violence charges were the by-product of the core case against Fernández for restricting the insurance of state agencies to Banco Nación and steering the commissions toward cronies such as his secretary’s husband. Just as the hypocrisy now being exposed dates from the root of his presidency in the insincere partnership with Fernández de Kirchner, so this scandal harks back to the start of his political career as the insurance superintendent of the first Carlos Menem term (1989-1995). It is surprising that this underlying corruption does not figure more prominently among Milei’s priorities nor public outrage.
The disgrace of its most recent president obviously finds Peronism in disrepute but its founder’s dictum quoted at the start of this editorial should be recalled in order to point out that the opposition looking bad does not of itself make the government good – the burden on the Milei administration to solve the many socio-economic problems remains the same. And while society likes to imagine itself innocent of the awful politicians, there is such a thing as people getting the government they deserve. Peronism in default leaves us with a government ruling by default.
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