MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

In the best Kirchner style: the new cabinet is more continuity than change

Cristina Fernandez keeps to the rules experience has shown her they work

Under the heading of “More continuity than change”, Argentine political analyst Rosendo Fraga describes the incoming cabinet of re-elected president Cristina Fernandez as something very much in the style of the Kirchner.

In effect the Kirchner couple during the over two decades in the Executive role (fist twelve years in Santa Cruz province and eight and a half in the Presidency) never changed cabinets, meaning by that half the ministers and renewing them with new faces.

Changes happened as in this circumstance as specific events demanded. This is the case of cabinet chief Anibal Fernandez who leaves for the Senate and is replaced by Juan Manuel Abel Medina, Media Secretary; Amado Boudou who becomes Vice-President leaves his Economy post to the Financial Secretary Hernan Lorenzino and Agriculture minister Julian Dominguez who became president of the Lower House leaves his post to Fisheries Secretary Norberto Yauhar.

“This confirms the style of power exercising by the Kirchner couple that has never convened the whole cabinet, something practiced both by Nestor and Cristina”, argues Fraga.

The new cabinet chief fits in the three values that months ago President Cristina Fernandez said would be taken into account on choosing ministers: youth, Abal Medina is in his early forties; loyalty, he has been a close aid of both Nestor and Cristina, and the commitment to fight the big corporations, something in which the Media Secretariat has played a key role in the conflict with the Argentine media conglomerates such as Clarin.

Incoming Economy minister Lorenzino is an official with a technical profile and with a good image in the markets and Norberto Yauhar is more of a political militant who was next to Kirchner when fighting Chubut governor and frustrated presidential hopeful, Das Neves.

So the characteristics of the ministerial cabinet change are more of continuity than of change. Some of the officials remaining in their posts have been with the Kirchner couple since Santa Cruz such as Planning and Infrastructure Minister Julio De Vido and the Legal and technical secretary of the presidency, Carlos Zanini.

However Fraga makes a point of mentioning the name of Carlos Tomada in the crucial job, since 2003, of minister of Labour and Employment. When organized labour under the leadership of Hugo Moyano emerges as the most relevant opposition to the incoming administration of President Cristina Fernandez, confirming Tomada implies no innovation, but keeping a man of great experience and knowledge of the unions which can easily perform dual-purpose: confrontation or conciliation.