MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Spanish media blasts Kirchners “obscure political methods”

The influential Spanish daily El País in one of its main editorials recently criticized the decisions, speeches and ruling attitude of Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner arguing they are eroding Argentina's economic credibility and the image of the Kirchner couple government.

Under the title "Argentine spirits crispate" El País says that the "obscure political methods of the Kirchners have aggravated a stand off with the farmers" and what begun as a confrontation over a disproportionate tax increase on grain exports has turned "into the worst political crisis since 2001". The Spanish newspaper mainly criticizes Mrs. Kirchner style. "Not only does President Fernandez not practice the political dialogue she promised during the electoral campaign. Under the protection of Argentina's institutional weakness she enshrines in haughty positions and resorts to the most unappealing authoritarian tics of Peronism to counteract the growing restlessness in the streets". El País also accuses the Kirchner administration of "fear mongering" via the "crude manipulation which pretends that behind the sustained and at times inadmissible farmers' protest is nesting a brewing coup d'état". Beyond the reasons a representative government has to adopt unpopular measures is "its obligation to explain them convincingly and facilitate their parliamentary debate", argues El País in direct reference to the recent decision to –finally--send the controversial tax decree to Congress. Nevertheless the Madrid newspaper says that Mrs. Kirchner seems more interested "in masking reality" and goes on to mention as an example the "manipulation of data related to Argentina's inflation". "The deliberate fiction in which Latinamerica's third economy lives, consecrated in the new consumer prices index effective this month, is another evidence of the president's despise for the values she says she is defending", concludes the editorial.