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Argentina’s VP Kirchner challenges president over resignations

AFP

Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Kirchner directly challenged her boss, President Alberto Fernandez on Thursday, demanding a cabinet reshuffle and blaming the ruling coalition’s recent electoral defeat on his economic policies. 

In a deepening political crisis, Kirchner wrote an open letter to Fernandez one day after five cabinet ministers and other senior officials offered to step down after a poor showing for the ruling coalition in weekend primary elections.

Fernandez has rejected the resignations.

“Do you seriously believe that it is not necessary, after such a defeat, to publicly present the resignations and that those in charge facilitate the president to reorganize his government?” Kirchner wrote in the letter in which she criticized those who “cling to their chairs.” 

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She also said she had warned that the government’s economic policies would “have electoral consequences.”

The ruling Frente de Todos center-left coalition garnered less than 31 percent of the vote ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for November 14 to renew half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies and a third of those in the Senate.

The alliance has a majority in the Senate and had been hoping to achieve the same in the lower house.

Sunday’s vote was to pick candidates for the November elections, but it is also considered a barometer of people’s voting intentions.

Fernandez called Thursday for his government to put aside “differences.”

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“This is not the time to raise disputes that distract us from this path,” Fernandez wrote on Twitter. “Governance will continue as I intend. That’s what I was elected to do,” added the president.

The move by the five ministers was interpreted by analysts as pressure from Kirchner, herself a former president, on Fernandez to reshuffle the cabinet.

The pair “do not trust each other and think that the other is keeping cards up his sleeve,” said political analyst Carlos Fara.

The center-right coalition Juntos, of ex-president Mauricio Macri, obtained 40 percent of the votes cast nationwide on Sunday. 

It critically made great strides in the province of Buenos Aires, the country’s largest electoral district and considered a bastion of Fernandez’s party.

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Fernandez took power from the incumbent Macri in 2019.

Public discontent with his government has been growing in a country in recession since 2018 and a GDP drop of 9.9 percent last year amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Argentina has one of the world’s highest inflation rates, at 29 percent from January to July this year, and a poverty rate of 42 percent.

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International

Trump urges Putin to reach peace deal

On Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump reiterated his desire for Russian President Vladimir Putin to “reach a deal” to end the war in Ukraine, while also reaffirming his willingness to impose sanctions on Russia.

“I want to see him reach an agreement to prevent Russian, Ukrainian, and other people from dying,” Trump stated during a press conference in the Oval Office at the White House.

“I think he will. I don’t want to have to impose secondary tariffs on Russian oil,” the Republican leader added, recalling that he had already taken similar measures against Venezuela by sanctioning buyers of the South American country’s crude oil.

Trump also reiterated his frustration over Ukraine’s resistance to an agreement that would allow the United States to exploit natural resources in the country—a condition he set in negotiations to end the war.

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International

Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links

A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.

Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.

Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.

However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.

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International

Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”

Guatemalan court decides Wednesday whether to convict journalist José Rubén Zamora

The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.

“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.

The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.

His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”

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