International
Argentina govt loses Congress majority, seeks opposition dialogue
AFP
Argentina’s center-left President Alberto Fernandez called for dialogue with the opposition after Sunday’s midterm parliamentary elections, with projections showing his governing coalition has lost control of Congress.
Ahead of the election, there was widespread discontent over the state of the economy, which has been in recession since 2018 and was hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Having already been in the minority in the Chamber of Deputies — the lower house — Fernandez’s Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) coalition looked set to drop from 41 to 35 seats in the 72-member Senate, based on projections with over 90 percent of votes counted.
“If the numbers are confirmed, effectively we’ve lost the quorum in the Senate,” a government source told AFP.
This would be the first time since Argentina’s return to democracy in 1983 that Peronism — a leftist movement based on former president Juan Peron that now covers a broad spectrum of political leanings — would not have a majority in the Senate.
Fernandez will now likely be forced to make concessions to the opposition during the last two years of his mandate in order to pass laws or make key appointments, including to the judiciary.
“We need to prioritize national agreements if we want to resolve the challenges we face,” said Fernandez, adding that he would approach opposition groups to try to find common ground.
“An opposition that is responsible and open to dialogue is a patriotic opposition.”
Nearly half the seats in the Chamber of Deputies were up for grabs, as well as a third of Senate seats, in Sunday’s vote.
Interior Minister Wado de Pedro said turnout in the compulsory election was between 71 and 72 percent.
– ‘Difficulty ahead’ –
Fernandez had been on the defensive since the Frente suffered a bruising defeat in September’s primaries, picking up just 33 percent of the vote compared with 37 percent for the main opposition group Juntos por el Cambio (Together for Change), led by Fernandez’s predecessor Mauricio Macri.
“These next two years are going to be difficult,” Macri said Sunday, while assuring voters that his coalition would “act with great responsibility.”
Fernandez “will have to negotiate law by law,” said Raul Aragon, political scientist at the National University of La Matanza.
He predicted the opposition would be open to talks though.
“It won’t serve them to not engage in dialogue, and appear anti-democratic” before the presidential elections in 2023, Aragon said.
Since the primaries, the government had been in damage limitation mode, announcing last month a deal with the private sector to freeze prices on more than 1,500 basic goods following street protests demanding greater food subsidies.
It has also increased the minimum wage and family allowances.
The government’s supporters have been forced to keep a low profile during the long pandemic lockdowns.
But pro-government trade unions and social organizations recently announced they would march in support of Fernandez on Wednesday, regardless of the election results.
– IMF debt looms –
Argentina’s GDP dropped 9.9 percent last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The country has one of the world’s highest inflation rates, at 40 percent so far this year, and a poverty rate of 42 percent for a population of 45 million.
“I fear for the economy,” pastry worker Oscar Navarro told AFP on Sunday, without revealing his vote.
“Salaries are not sufficient. Whoever wins, it will take a long time for the country to recover.”
The government is also in the midst of a tricky renegotiation with the International Monetary Fund over the repayment of a $44 billion debt, originally secured by the Macri government in 2018.
“In this new stage, we will deepen our efforts to secure a sustainable deal with the IMF,” said Fernandez.
He said the country needed to get past the “uncertainties that come with unsustainable debt,” while creating jobs and reducing inflation.
If Fernandez does not manage to reach a new repayment schedule, Argentina will have to repay $19 billion in 2022 and as much again in 2023.
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.
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.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
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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