MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Nestor, what a vice president you picked for me”

Quietly waiting for the Lady to travel overseas

The differences between Argentina's ruling couple Cristina and Nestor Kirchner and vice president Julio Cobos seem irreconcilable and become worse to the minute.

Not only is he a "turncoat" and "traitor" for having cast the decisive vote in the Senate which defeated the Kirchner administration's plan to increase export taxes on cereals and oil seeds (and humiliated the couple by loosing the several months-long conflict with farmers), but since then he has been playing a more active role. And his high profile becomes particularly infuriating for the ruling couple when Mrs. Kirchner is overseas and Mr. Cobos runs the Executive office, although from his simple desk at the Senate building. (He wouldn't dare move to Casa Rosada). However this situation has helped pave the way for the political truth to emerge about who really continues to rule Argentina. In a recent speech during a political rally before the teamsters former president Nestor Kirchner praised his wife's grit and conditions to manage the country. "Cristina has been my confident and friend for 33 years". But he also humbly confessed it was him that picked the former governor of Mendoza, Cobos for vice-president in the ticket with Cristina for last year's election. "I must admit that every morning when we wake up Cristina looks at me and tells me "what a vice president you chose for me Nestor!" said Kirchner adding that the reproach has become quite insistent. The awkward situation has triggered rumours of alleged requests from the Kirchners for Mr. Cobos to resign, although it was dismissed by Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo, "he knows what he should do if he had dignity, but we're not going to ask him to go". Cobos through his spokespersons has suggested that Congress should convene a referendum to decide the issue, whether he should stay or leave, but it was also discarded as "impractical". The fact is that relations between the couple and Cobos are completely cut off. Politically Cobos knows that the more he comes under attack from the Kirchners the more popular he becomes something which the couple is also well aware of. "Any vice president with his own ideas would have problems with this government", said member of Congress Daniel Katz. The Kirchners are used to be surrounded by "aye-aye characters, submissively obedient to a humiliation degree such as Daniel Scioli (former vice president and Buenos Aires province governor) or Carlos Chacho Alvarez (a former vice president and currently a Mercosur official)", added Katz.