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 to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border
Donald Trump will sign over 200 executive orders this Monday, including declaring a national emergency at the southern U.S. border and designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorists on his first day as president, according to U.S. network Fox News.
A senior administration official familiar with the executive actions Trump will sign, and who was authorized to inform the media according to Fox News, said that the president will sign multiple “omnibus” executive orders, each containing dozens of significant actions.
The source indicated that Trump will declare a national border emergency, order the U.S. military to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fully secure the southern border, and make it a national priority to eliminate all criminal cartels operating on U.S. soil. This version of the emergency declaration had previously been reported by CNN News and was also confirmed to The Wall Street Journal on Sunday.
According to Fox News, Trump will close the border to all undocumented foreign nationals through a proclamation. He will also create task forces for national security protection, working with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other agencies to “completely eradicate the presence of criminal cartels.”
International
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Thursday the appointment of actors Sylvester Stallone (‘Rocky’) and Jon Voight (‘Midnight Cowboy’), as well as actor and director Mel Gibson (‘Braveheart’) as special ambassadors to the “very problematic” Hollywood.
“They will help me as special envoys to make Hollywood, which has lost many overseas businesses in the last four years, COME BACK BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER,” he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social.
The Republican lamented all the “problems” he claims Hollywood faces and created this role with the aim of improving the situation from a business perspective.
“These three talented men will be my eyes and ears. I will do whatever they suggest,” he said.
Stallone had previously described Trump as the second George Washington, the first U.S. president (1789–1797) and one of the nation’s founding fathers, during a dinner after his victory in the November presidential elections, where he served as the master of ceremonies.
Meanwhile, Gibson attacked Trump’s rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, accusing her of having “the IQ of a fence.”
The Republican leader will be sworn in as president on January 20 on the steps of the U.S. Capitol, succeeding Democrat Joe Biden.
International
Latin American and Caribbean diplomats voice concern over U.S. mass deportation plan
Diplomatic chiefs from ten Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their “serious concern” over the announcement of a mass deportation of migrants, a measure they consider incompatible with human rights, according to a joint statement released this Friday.
The statement, which does not attribute the measure to any specific country, refers to the announcement made by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to carry out the largest foreign deportation operation in the history of the nation once he takes office next Monday. “The announcements of mass deportations are a serious cause for concern, especially due to their incompatibility with the fundamental principles of human rights and their failure to effectively address the structural causes of migration,” the statement said, released by Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
The signing countries—Brazil, Belize, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela (almost all migrant-sending nations)—also committed to “defend the human rights of all migrants.”
This includes “rejecting the criminalization of migrants at all stages of the migration cycle” and “protecting them as a priority from transnational organized crime that profits from migration,” the document adds.
Trump to sign over 200 executive orders, declaring National Emergency at U.S.-Mexico Border
Paraguayan president Santiago Peña meets Venezuela’s opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia in Washington
Trump appoints Stallone, Voight, and Gibson as special ambassadors to Hollywood
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