MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Mingling with ordinary people from a distance can have its problems for Cristina Fernandez

The grateful farmer who praised the president has had power at his house for two decades (TV imagen)

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez has taken a taste for video conferences and likes, with electronic distance, to mingle with ordinary people while opening major work. However things can also go wrong or don’t work out as planned.

This happened only last week when the inauguration of power lines in a rural area of the province of Misiones to the north east of Argentina and next to the Brazilian border.

An ever grateful and spontaneous resident speaking in ‘portuñol’ a mix of Spanish and Portuguese, underlined how important it was to have power and how it would change the lives of the people from Colonia El Soberbio.

Milton Lopez message was repeated over and over by President Cristina Fernandez during her monologue about the opening of ‘inclusion public works”, until the local radio became flooded with phone calls, some of them even reaching Buenos Aires.

In effect, apparently Mr Lopez has had electricity at his home for many years, he had no need to appeal to candles and neighbours even detailed the power bills paid to EMSA, Electricity Misiones by the man so grateful to CFK. 

Misiones governor Maurice Closs and President Cristina Fernandez had inaugurated power lines to El Soberbio so that electricity could reach the small farms of the area in the Guarani and General Belgrano counties.

And in this context emerges live on television Milton Lopez: “It has changed my life, for me and my family, because now we can have a fridge, washing machine, when until not so long ago we only had candles and kerosene lamps”, said the small farmer.

The television images showed when Lopez lights a modest bulb at his home and an enthusiastic president underlined the event.

“This image is the true representation of Mercosur. For me giving an Argentine, power when he didn’t have it is something marvellous” said Cristina Fernandez.

“These are the things we must understand those of us who have been brought up where we always had them since born” she underlined.

However one of Lopez neighbours speaking on radio and later interviewed on television in Posadas, the capital of the province of Misiones said that “Lopez has had electricity in his house for the last twenty years and that is why when I saw him I was so surprised about what he was saying. I can’t understand why they came out with all that stuff”.

But this is not the first time that the Argentine president has been exposed to such circumstances.

Last February during an opening of public works by a video conference, Cristina Fernandez talked to a miner from the location and told him: “Antonio, you are no political leader; you are a true worker that defends your job and where you work; an example for Argentina”.

However it was later revealed that Antonio was none less that head of the local miners union and deputy chairman of the local ruling party chapter, Partido Justicialista.

Not long after Cristina Fernandez addressed, again via video conference, a dairy farmer from General Lamadrid, who was also an example of a ‘non partisan’ farmer entirely dedicated to his cows and running the family business.

But not soon after it turned out he had been a candidate for the local city Council in representation of the ruling coalition of President Cristina Fernandez.

Mistake, blooper, poor organization, con people, whatever, but again not a convincing exercise of transparent governance.