May 30, 2013
Jaime Daremblum
Back in September, Argentines
held massive nationwide rallies to protest the
autocratic abuses, economic failures, and rampant corruption of President
Cristina Kirchner. Two months later, they held even bigger demonstrations. And on April 18, they
held their largest protests yet, with roughly two million people marching in cities and towns
across the country, including more than one million in Buenos Aires alone.
"I took to the street because
we live in a democracy that runs the risk of transforming into
authoritarianism," one Argentine university student told Reuters. "This government doesn't want to
listen. Every day, we become more like hostages, and somehow we have to make
this known."
The immediate trigger for the
April 18 protests was a Kirchner proposal to abolish judicial independence, but
the demonstrators also expressed concerns about everything from sky-high inflation to violent crime to government attacks on press freedom. In the weeks
following their protests, they received good news and bad news. The good news
was that Argentina's court system pushed back against Kirchner's war on free
expression. The bad news was that government-allied lawmakers enacted her judicial "reforms," which means that
the ruling party will now have majority control over the legal council that
appoints and (if necessary) removes federal judges. It's not hard to see what
this will mean in practice: Argentina's executive branch will be able to stack
the federal courts with friendly magistrates, and it will also be able to
impeach any judge who doesn't toe the party line.
Not surprisingly, many outside
groups and institutions have condemned Kirchner's judicial overhaul as an
assault on democracy. Both José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch and United Nations special rapporteur Gabriela
Knaul have said that it "seriously compromises" the independence of
Argentina's judiciary, and Transparency International has warned that it could "threaten the country's rule
of law by concentrating too much power in the executive branch." Argentina's
National Chamber of Civil Appeals has said that it "violates the principle of judicial
independence," and the Argentine Business Association has called it "a serious threat to constitutional
guarantees." In Buenos Aires, Mayor Mauricio Macri and members of the city
legislature have taken actions to affirm their support for freedom of
expression.
Kirchner's judicial power grab
comes at a moment when many Argentine jurists are resisting her efforts to
create a Venezuelan-style autocracy. For example, just a few weeks before
Argentina's Senate passed the judicial reforms, an appeals court ruled that portions of her 2009 "anti-monopoly"
media law are unconstitutional. This is the law that Kirchner has used to demand
the breakup of Grupo Clarín, Argentina's largest media conglomerate, which
publishes the country's leading newspaper, Clarín. The Clarín empire represents
Kirchner's biggest journalistic opponent — that's why she has fought so hard to
dismantle it. After the recent appellate ruling, the case will go to Argentina's
Supreme Court.
But Kirchner isn't wasting any
time. Earlier this month, her supporters in Congress introduced a bill that would allow the government
to seize a majority stake in Argentina's only newsprint manufacturer. Such a
move would obviously hurt anti-Kirchner newspapers such as Clarín and La
Nación, especially given Argentina's strict currency controls and import
restrictions. Those papers are already struggling to deal with Kirchner's
undeclared advertising war: As the Wall
Street Journal reported in February, Argentina's supermarket
companies and electronic retailers have been ordered by the government "to stop
advertising in the country's top newspapers." The new judicial reforms will make
it even harder for journalists to appeal unconstitutional assaults on their
freedom, because injunctions against government policy will be capped at six months.
Meanwhile, Kirchner has also
tried to manipulate Argentina's financial regulations. "In November," notes the Economist,
"the government changed the capital-markets law to give the state-controlled
regulator, the National Securities Commission, the power to intervene in
companies listed on the stock market if the interests of minority shareholders
are neglected. Ricardo Kirschbaum, the editor of Clarín,
says he fears that this law will soon be used to seize control of the
company."
For now, Argentine judges are doing their best to uphold democracy
and the rule of law. A few weeks ago, federal courts overturned the outrageous fines that had been
slapped on private consultants who reported honest Argentine inflation numbers.
Kirchner has consistently lied about the country's real inflation rate — which
is approximately 25 percent — and on February 1 the
International Monetary Fund formally censured her government for publishing bogus statistics. The
online business journal Latinvex hasprojected that "Argentina is likely to have the world's
highest inflation rate this year." (Yes, Argentina's inflation problem is even
worse than Venezuela's.)
Unfortunately, Kirchner's judicial reforms have moved Argentina
significantly closer to authoritarianism. Indeed, even before the Argentine
Congress voted to end judicial independence, media freedom was steadily
declining. "The press environment as a whole worsened in 2012," observes Freedom House, "as the administration
carried out smear campaigns against critical journalists, usually through public
media."
Opposition forces are now
hoping that the Supreme Court will rule in favor of Clarín and strike down the
bulk of Kirchner's controversial 2009 media law. They are also hoping to pick up
seats in Argentina's October 2013 mid-term legislative elections. According to
one pollster, Kirchner's approval rating dropped from 64 percent at the time of her
reelection in October 2011 to 34 percent in March 2013. Yet Kirchner is still
benefiting from a weak and divided opposition, as she has throughout her
tenure.
The mid-term elections may
determine whether pro-government lawmakers can amend the constitution to let her
seek a third term in 2015. They may also determine whether — or how soon —
Argentina's democracy can be saved.
Ambassador Jaime Daremblum
is a Hudson Institute Senior Fellow and directs the Center for Latin American
Studies
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