MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
CFK calls on unions to cool down and ratifies she’s ‘not dying to be president again’
Interior minister Randazzo says Mrs Kirchner has an unbelievable support in the whole of Argentina Argentine Minister of Interior ratified late Tuesday that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner threat that she would not bid for re-election next October if organized labour continues to pressure on her government. However CFK is not annoyed with Hugo Moyano chief of the powerful Labour Confederation, CGT.
“President Cristina Fernandez is not dying to be president again, and much less conditioned by corporations”, said Minister Randazzo, as part of the daily exchange between Mrs Kirchner and Moyano.
The organized labour leader is demanding a percentage of places for unionists in the ballot lists including the Vice-president post in the incumbent presidential ticket for the October election when the Executive and over half of congress will be renewed.
But in spite of the growing tension between the Argentine government and organized labour, Randazzo discarded that Mrs Kirchner was annoyed with the chief of the Labour Confederation.
“She’s not mad with Moyano but rather with a modality implemented by some sectors that have benefited generously from this government”, said Randazzo adding that the president “has an unbelievable support all over Argentina”.
Last week Cristina Fernandez accused organized labour of acting in a “corporate” and “extortive” manner appealing to repeated work stoppages, pickets and blockades.
“When a union only cares about what matters to its affiliates and is against the rest of the community, it’s no longer a union, it becomes a corporate organization” said the Argentine president during a political rally.
Randazzo said that in democracy “there are conflicts” and called for claims of better salaries and work conditions to be channelled in a framework of “rationality and responsibility”.
Finally the minister said that when organized labour pushes for places in ballot lists for October elections, it is “fair and part of the democratic game”. But there are limits to those pressures, which mean avoiding repeated stoppages and distortions to the normal activities of the rest of the community.
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Read all commentsCFK is NOT the person to get Argentina out of its fix - she is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
May 18th, 2011 - 01:47 pm 0She, AND the unions should read the British history of the Thatcher years:
The British unions pushed, pushed, and pushed until the Government pushed back with all the force of the democratic state. It was an unequal fight and the Government won and destroyed the power of the unions. Embitterment divided the country for more than a generation, but at least the country became ‘governable’ again.
A union boss who extends beyond his remit – support for the fair treatment of the members of the union – is a rapacious big-beast, using his position to advance or withdraw the nation’s workers in the fight for ‘advancement’, using the union membership as the ‘poor, bloody infantry’ (from World War 1, where the phrase ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ also comes from).
Rapacious beasts need the protection of a strong cage – somewhere where they can gently lose the adrenalin generated in their struggle for state-power, and where they can return to looking after their union members.
By analogy, they are the biggest ram in the flock of sheep, but even Top-Ram must defer to the sheepdog. And the sheepdog must defer to the sheep-farmer. So it is – and so it should be – in national governance.
@1
May 18th, 2011 - 03:26 pm 0So, who do you think “the person to get Argentina out of its fix” should be? That is also the problem people here discuss. There are few alternatives.
And the unions,..Argentina is simply behind the times. Unions have historically grown too big for their britches and always get squashed by a government. Argentina has not reached that phase yet but will; most locals here are already pretty peeved with the unions.
I see no 'George Washington', no 'Bill of Rights', no-one of True Grit on the horizon
May 18th, 2011 - 08:33 pm 0- but others are closer to the action than I,
perhaps there is a White Knight - an uncorrupted, uncorruptable one - out there in eg. the groves of academe, the judicary.
This country needs leading out of the wilderness of strange ideas and even stranger governances.
Which true Argentinean will stand up and bring his/her country into the modern (first)world?
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