This article is dedicated to the memory of Professor Milton Friedman, a source of wisdom.

Everything suggests that the political climate has started to deteriorate in Argentina. Not so long ago, President Kirchner was heading first in a race which he ran alone. But since life is not a photograph, all of a sudden the playing field was filled with players and now nothing is the way it used to be.

The economic horizon, that had so far been spotlessly diaphanous, has begun to show some large dark clouds coming in. Repressed inflation, artificial expansion of consumption, three years of frozen tariffs and prices regulated by the Ministry of Economy and Production compose a formula that guarantees middle-term complications. Economics and history show that the attempt to compensate for the backward demand of the medium and lower sectors by issuing money and raising salaries has its costs. Argentina does not escape statistics; it is the very impulse that the government gives to consumption what pushes the prices upwards, and the premise is fulfilled also in this case: the low income sectors are the ones who pay for the inflationary tax, since they lack the mechanisms to avoid it.

The agricultural sector continues demanding that the authorities suspend the discriminating treatment towards the industry that contributes most wealth to the fiscal surplus continuously praised by the government and pointed out as one of the great successes of the present administration. The recent prohibition of bovine exports is added to the taxes that pile up on the cereal exporters, and has weakened even further the feeble relationship between the agriculture and livestock producers and the National State.

There are some latent conflicts also in the political field. The picket leader Luis D’Elía has just abandoned, unwillingly, the official bureau with which President Kirchner had distinguished him after publicly confronting the central power in the extremely delicate conflict of the terrorist attacks that took place in Argentina more than a decade ago, and that still remain unsolved.

The recent defeat in the Misiones province suffered by the official candidate, who intended to perpetuate himself in power with Néstor Kirchner´s explicit support, has made the other illusions of re-election that flourished in other districts go down the drain. This event has destroyed the feudal delusions of several governors and has forced President Kirchner himself to redefine his hegemonic project.

In the midst of all this and as the crowning glory for a load of bad news for the present administration, an opposition that wants to establish its foundations seems to be developing very much against the governing party’s will. Leaders from different political currents and citizens who are well-known for their defence of the Republican principles are in a process of consensus and unity that has reached a point of no return.

Suddenly, an addicted Supreme Court, a tamed Congress and judges who are docile and attentive to the political needs of whoever the present administration is controlled by are not enough for Néstor Kirchner to reach next year’s presidential elections with that winner feeling that has brought him up to here.

* María Zaldívar is a TV journalist from Argentina and Bachelor of Political Science (UCA, Catholic University of Argentina).

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