Prisoner

Rather than sympathy the President generates pity. Because she agreed –maybe thinking that Néstor Carlos Kirchner would last forever– to be placed almost arbitrarily on Rivadavia´s Couch, being perfectly aware of her now proven inability to perform executive tasks. Once Cristina Elisabet Fernández Wilhelm leaves office (if indeed it does not happen before time), Argentine people will continue to debate for long years about her responsibility for the social chaos that is engulfing the Republic once again. In virtue of the hard times ahead, it will not be exaggerated to state, within a few months, that Aníbal Fernández was not the worst thing that could happen to the security management of the country. We have already mentioned in our paper that the President had been imprisoned in the heart of a nest of vipers where she would never find someone to trust. Given the chaos of the squatting, she thought it was right removing good Aníbal from the comptrollership of the Federal Police and other security forces. It has always been said that ¨Citizen Kirchner’s¨ former wife had high hopes for Nilda Garré, who is remembered by some ¨malicious¨ ones alias ¨Commandant Teresa¨. Anyway, the first important measure taken by former Ministry of Defence in charge of the PFA (Federal Argentine Police) has been to prohibit agents facing potential evictions from carrying weapons. This initiative –entitled in capital letters on Clarín front page on Sunday edition, December 19th– opens Avernus’ heavy doors with a single kick. Because this is a neat invitation for drug traffickers’ hired armies from slums and settlements in the Capital District to fiercely strike at everyone. With the additive that they can easily pass over men in uniform as if they were toy soldiers. It is the State who definitely resigns to the monopoly of violence in order to directly pass it to the main enemy of any democratic system: organised crime. It is worth, then, wondering if Cristina has been wise to give Nilda Garré this vote of confidence. Although the latter is reluctant to admit that, in fact, she goes for the police cashboxes, i.e., Federal Police’s ¨collection¨ (from our source ¨Sorge¨). The President’s circle of trust has been very recently narrowed to the minimum. It only takes a small sample: by plucking Héctor Masquelet –Secretary of Justice, Aníbal Fernández’s man– and replacing him with the unknown Alejandro Julián Alvarez from La Campora, CFK is merely admitting that she has run out of substitutes. Worse still, there’s room to conclude that the arrival of a young man responding to Máximo Kirchner is the currency in which Nestor’s son group is rewarded, in virtue of the "good advice" of paying 40 million pesos to move out squatters from Indo-American Park. Just as it was spread around by Mauricio Macri’s PRO –in a planned leak to the press– and the scholar Jorge Cayetano Saín Asís a few hours ago (http://www.jorgeasisdigital.com/). The political-social theatre of operations has just been dyed in jet black because, if so far it has been said that the heart of Kirchnerists hawks was pushing Cristina to continue until October 2011 as a prerogative to keep their own business, from now on everything seems to show that even those grim-looking characters have concluded that the President has become scrap material. Imprisoned in her own maze –built in collusion with her husband– she chose the wrong strategy so many times that, political analysts, feeling dizzy, lost count. This happened since Cristina tried to foist clashes between neighbours and drug dealers from slums on Mauricio Macri and Eduardo Alberto Duhalde. In this instance, picketers related to drug trafficking –regents of paco and cocaine kitchens from slums together with their dark sponsors– took advantage and quickly led their hordes to light the fuse and took all they could. Meanwhile, people from other settlements and groups of illegal aliens proceeded to do likewise. Not being organized criminals and ordinary criminals, others took notice of the contagious effect and found that the law had vanished from streets. Justice –as in the case of Judge Daniel Rafecas– exhibited the same hesitation spilled from the Pink House, issuing an eviction order and then a countermand. The sentence "Evict without repression or resorting to violence" sounds like a space-time paradox or an antithetical expression from where you look at it, as it is equivalent to asking with good manners and caresses dangerously armed squatters to leave a taken property. Immediately afterwards, neighbours themselves get involved, taking law enforcement into their own hands: Argentines have definitely convinced themselves that their National Government and System of Justice creak in fear of crime, uncontrolled political pointers and desperate slums’ residents. It is, in fact, the finished byproduct that Nestor Kirchner fed since 2003 when he was still alive, but no one dared to complain. Pandemonium that is complemented in a bittersweet way with INDEC lies and the famous popularity index of a "seventy percent or more ", made up from beginning to end on the neat desks of opinion pollsters and analysts for hire. With the reprehensible complicity of the ¨loftiest¨ exponents from Clarín holding and the whole rented establishment from ¨professional¨ journalism. President Cristina Fernández Wilhelm is now a prisoner of her former courtiers Horacio Verbitzky, Carlos Zannini, Nilda Garre, Francisco "Paco" Larcher, Hector Icazuriaga, Luis D Elia, Hebe de Bonafini, Sergio Schoklender and many others. Indeed, those who promised to defend her from the dismissing clutches of "the Right” (to separate the above mentioned in sub-groups or small guilds is an exercise in futility, not worth trying). In the end, what became effective was that "If you have no strategy, you immediately become part of someone else’s strategy¨. However, it turned out that "the Right" was not such a fearsome threat. It was only a monster artificially enlarged by the people recorded in the previous paragraph, with the "noblest" aim of magnifying its own importance. In the midst of tragicomedy and with a broken compass, Cristina had reached the impossible in record time: to waste the political assets that she had added after her husband’s death and to catapult Mauricio Macri and Eduardo Duhalde’s (the "Godfather") popularity to not insignificant levels. Buenos Aires city Head of Government’s strategy was more pro-active and not at all innocent, he quickly perceived that the President and Aníbal Fernández were ready to be knocked out in one stroke, and he made his move. The man from Lomas de Zamora is to play the role of a distracted bystander, who unexpectedly, looks down and runs into the winning lottery ticket on the greasy pavement. With lightning speed, the House Pink accused him of organizing the suburban chaos. The President’s reaction turned out to be so naive and childish that, by this time, the average citizen makes jokes, blaming Duhalde even for the rain that ruined the weekend. What late Nestor Kirchner’s wife must be wondering right now is whether Juan Carlos "Chueco" Mazzone’s recommendations in this regard were not properly part of a well-threaded counterintelligence operation: to incidentally blame Duhalde in order to raise his image. The only thing that the first mandatory has bothered to do is to heed his son Maximo’s advice, who was, then, rewarded with jobs for his partners in La Cámpora. For a complete understanding: this group of youths –in which also Guillermo Moreno used to swarm– is set to become the next generation of callow kleptocrats who fit in thanks to peddling influences, prebendary interests and corruption. Like the past surreal and nauseating experiment called the radical "Coordinatora". And, needless to say, all presidents have had and will have their stronghold of youths aspiring to succeed only to plunder the state treasury. Although accurate, the colourful datum is probably the most difficult to assimilate: it is the very opposition Peronism which –already in talks with socialists, ARI, UCR and Gen– has become convinced that Cristina should be kept in power at any price, against the interests of the very same neofascist-like presidential circle that keeps her fenced. There are many basics, but what stands out is the need to avoid a social explosion of unpredictable consequences that many consider could turn December 2001 into a kindergarten. Night’s shadows become more intense, and Cristina Fernandez has transmuted into a merely ceremonial figure that has lost all respect and consideration from citizens. As it has never happened during these 27 years of democracy, newspapers headlines these days –particularly on Sunday 19th– have mercilessly attacked the devalued President’s image, trying not to lose track on ordinary people, who also do the same. Although in the street, taxis, bars and restaurants, the epithets are increasingly more difficult to reproduce; but hard to forget, creative as they are. English translation by Debora Gravano. e-Mail: debora.gravano @ gmail.com. By Matías E. Ruiz, to El Ojo Digital Política. e-Mail: contacto @ elojodigital.com. Twitter: http://twitter.com/matiaseruiz