Three years after having taken office, confrontation seems to be for President Néstor Kirchner either a state policy or a biological personal need. In the international sphere, he has fallen out with almost every country in the region; he has unnecessarily raised the tone of his dissent with the United States; he has criticized the multilateral credit organizations in the context of a démodé strategy that attempts to use the fallacy of a regional victimization of Latin America as an object despicably exploited by the rich countries. Kirchner has managed to isolate Argentina from the rest of the world.
From the very beginning, he has also internally encouraged the confrontation between sectors and people. He has disagreed, with no republican tolerance at all, with his opponents, businessmen, politicians, academicians and journalists. He has ill-treated the members of the armed and security forces; he has harshly criticized the preceding administrations and he even clashed with Eduardo Duhalde, the leader whose support made it possible for Kirchner to be in power. He has disqualified, one by one, the criticisms of his authoritarian political leadership and revived an atmosphere of collective intolerance that jeopardizes the society’s peaceful coexistence. His most recent target has been the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which he attacks with no restraint from the podium created for the political propaganda of his administration.
President Kirchner is either unable to take measures to administer in a peaceful way or he does not know how, but the truth is that he needs conflict for his political action, and this is a serious deformation. Argentina has already gone through armed civil confrontations and it is the political leadership’s duty to overcome the tragic incidents of our recent history. Kirchner stokes them up dangerously. The question is, what for? Why does he encourage old resentments? What does the President seek with the reissue of hatred?
In the 70’s, when the subversive terrorism flooded the argentine society with fear through a wave of violence unknown in Latin America, there were thousands of casualties. In that war, in which the armed forces defended the civil population to prevent the installation of a Marxist government and the dissolution of the republican institutions, there were two clear sides, but Néstor Kirchner did not belong to any of them. He was not an activist in favor of the urban guerillas, nor did he form part of the loyal forces. For that reason, 30 years later, his pretension of choosing sides seems to be a pretense.
It is a pretense and, worst of all, as it turns up, he is the Argentine President. Now, he cannot choose sides and exercise injustice and arbitrary actions from his position of power; however, this is precisely what he has been doing since he arrived to the Casa Rosada. The Argentine President builds up his power with discord as his starting point. He should know that, even if this technique offers immediate results because it divides and rules, history shows that what goes around comes around.
* María Zaldívar is a TV journalist from Argentina and Bachelor of Political Science (UCA, Catholic University of Argentina).
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