In Spanish we say “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”. Something like: A man is known by the company he keeps. Or similarly: Birds of a feather flock together. That can also apply to countries. This administration has a very friendly foreign policy approach with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, where human rights abuses are common currency. Political prisoners, fraud, disappearances, censorship, police brutality, presidents who stay in power for life, these are some of the features of such countries Argentina, or rather kirchnerism, clearly looks up to. Mind you. I’m not talking about us, the people, but about them, our current leaders.
Our President has just accused IMF “of seeking to impose austerity on Argentina”. That’s a laugh! We’ve been practicing “austerity” for decades now. Actually “austerity” is a euphemism, an understatement, since we’ve been getting poorer and poorer non stop, due to the incompetence of successive lousy. administrations.
And to top it all, the presence of our ambassador to Nicaragua Daniel Capitanich (yes, Jorge’s brother), at the inauguration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, ceremony which Iranian Deputy Minister Mohsen Rezai (one of the accused in the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires) also attended. Then our government apologized. But … no use crying over spilt milk. The damage was done.
Irene Bianchi for Buenos Aires Times