MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Growing political support for Argentine farmers protest

Argentine farmers continued with their round of political contacts visiting Congress in Buenos Aires while officials from the Kirchner administration said governors should not feel obliged to receive farmers' delegations and anticipated that “new beneficial alternatives” were under consideration by the government.

With only two days before the protest ends (Thursday) representatives from the four organizations leading the farmers' protest were received on Tuesday in Congress by members of the opposition that openly supported camp's demands and promised "to start a national debate to promote farmers initiatives in the House". Farmers revealed they had began collecting a million signatures which they would bring to Congress as an instrument to help roll back the March increase in export levies imposed by the Kirchner administration, and which triggered the two months long conflict. But Argentina's Justice Anibal Fernandez ratified that the controversial sliding grain and oil seeds export levies "is not an issue we are willing to review, and that has already been addresses", however he anticipated that "we are looking into alternatives which would enable us to return to the previous status quo and would also be more beneficial". As to how Mrs. Kirchner was handling the situation, Fernandez said "she has faced the situation straight on; anyhow it would have been much simpler for farmers to remain at the negotiation table than go out to the routes to protest. I don't understand why they did it when they well know the only way out of this situation is dialogue". Anibal Fernandez also pointed out that governors have no obligation to meet with protesting farmers delegations but underlined that the current discussion is beyond the provincial level, it's a matter of strategic planning for Argentina. "Governors can very well have a specific opinion on the issue". However Fernandez recalled that the "federalism" (distribution of funds among provinces), so much claimed by farmers' leaders depends on provincial governments. "The bill which was approved under the presidency of President Nestor Kirchner needs the approval of the 24 provinces and three are still holding out, Buenos Aires, Neuquen and Salta; there's not much we can do, but they can try and convince them when they make the round of governors". In Congress Mario Llambías from the Rural Confederations said that when the hike of the soy export levies from 35 to 44% in early March they were forced to the streets to protest "but then we realized we were not the only ones who were being skimmed of our monies which are then discretionally distributed by some government official; thousands turned out to support us, thousands of flags became the symbol of protest, we were very surprised with the peoples' reply". But the most applauded of all leaders was De Angeli head of the Gualeguaychu pickets who has become a media reference of the conflict and the Kirchner administration has been twisting arms of national television to have him off the air. "We all need to admit our mea culpa", said De Angeli. "When the superpowers were voted and approved in Congress we helped create this situation and it's of great men to admit mistakes". With superpowers and a booming economy four years running the Kirchner administration has had access to masses of funds which it distributes according to adherence and faithfulness to the couple's political project. One of the main sources of those funds and surplus primary budget has been taxing commodities exports. Meantime the Argentine Chamber of the Cooking Oil Industry and the Cereals Exporters Center which handle a third of the country's exports said that during the last week overseas sales only amounted to 700 million US dollars which is 60% down from normal trading this time of the year. This was attributed to the fact that grain and oilseed markets remain closed since the current protest began last May 7 Between both organizations since the beginning or the year they have exported to the tune of 7.8 billion US dollars. Export income from Argentine cereals and oilseeds between 2003 and 2007 amounted to 9.5 billion US dollars; 11 billion; 11.6 billion; 12.7 billion and 17.6 billion, respectively.