Offshore democracy, or Argentina through the looking glass.
Since the election of Mauricio Macri in November 2015, Argentina has found itself at the sharp end of an assault by Latin America’s New Right. Macri, the co-owner of at least a dozen front companies in tax havens, also follows the example of other heads of state implicated alongside him in the Panama Papers by using the judiciary to persecute opposition and block free speech.
Argentine news outlets affiliated with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists ICIJ) have downplayed the President’s involvement in the offshore accounts scandal. With the approval of their international partners, the dailies La Nación and Clarín kept Macri’s dirty secrets under wraps until after the presidential elections. What’s more, he was given a month’s warning about the publication: plenty of time to come up with PR and legal strategies to divert attention away from the shocking revelations.
The role of the mass media in the political establishment and in favor of the well-heeled is nothing new. However, there are different levels of obscenity, and the Argentine case is perhaps one of the most flagrant of recent times. When, under the leadership of the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung, news outlets from several countries were invited to join the investigation, the only Argentine representatives were Macri stalwarts. No independent voice was allowed. La Nación itself appears in the Panama Papers, as the owner of offshore holdings.
Macri, meanwhile, declared himself “surprised” at discovering he was the director of offshore companies, along with his father and brother. At the same time, information has emerged suggesting that offshore companies in the name of Macri’s former finance minister in the City of Buenos Aires could have been used to transfer millions from the public coffers to the electoral campaign of his party, the PRO.
Media protection for the president and many of his ministers is just the tip of a very large and decades-old iceberg. The Clarín Group is, in proportional terms, one of the most dominant media conglomerates in the world, owning cable TV platforms, internet service providers, radio stations, television channels and print media. Alongside La Nación, the Clarín Group is a major shareholder in the nation's largest newsprint maker Papel Prensa - acquired from its original owners under alleged duress under the last dictatorship. As in Brazil with O Globo and O Estado de São Paulo, this has allowed them an almost 40-year hold on printed and audio-visual public discourse.
The Kirchnerist government attempted to break up this monopoly through its Media Law, approved by a wide margin in both chambers of Congress in 2009 and, after a prolonged legal battle with the Clarín Group, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2013. But on his first day in office, Macri hurriedly repealed the law by emergency decree. As a result of this bit of mutual back-scratching, the Clarín Group not only no longer has to divest itself of holdings, but is now in the process of signing contracts to access the only piece of the puzzle that was missing – the mobile phone market.
The few media outfits opposed to Macri find themselves in dire straits. Journalists who have raised critical voices have been sacked. So it’s no surprise that armed attacks on opposition buildings and bomb threats against human rights organisations have gone almost unnoticed. Demonstrations against the government have been ignored or underestimated, as have massive layoffs which, according to union sources, have now accounted for some 200,000 workers since Macri took office.
The media’s protection of Macri’s administration works in conjunction with sectors of the judiciary who, under the banner of denouncing “corruption”, are effectively seeking to go after, weaken and, if possible, imprison members of the opposition. Judge Claudio Bonadío – an outspoken supporter of Macri, formerly linked to the notoriously corrupt government of Carlos Menem, accused of burying cases related to the traffic of contaminated blood and the terrorist attack on the Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) in 1994 – called former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to testify in court over a case stemming from $4 billion in Central Bank losses caused by Macri's own devaluation.
The judiciary’s pursuit of Mrs. Kirchner should be viewed within a broader pattern of judicial anomalies, most notably the arrest of indigenous activist Milagro Sala in the northern province of Jujuy, where even her defense lawyer has been threatened with legal action. These judges, serving the interests of politicians and the media, appear to share a common goal: to see the opposition leaders behind bars.
This new political agenda marks the transfer of power and control of the economy to large corporations linked to members of Macri’s government. While the Macri campaign demonized Mrs. Kirchner's inclusive citizenship policies and dismissed them as pork-barrel politics or worse, relatives and friends of Macri officials are being hired as government officials or being awarded contracts; speculators are coddled (notably the vulture funds, who received a 1,180% payout); and regulations against tax evasion and money laundering go unenforced.
Plutocracy, after all, may well simply be the former name for this new offshore democracy.
At: https://www.opendemocracy.net/democraciaabierta/observatorio-argentino/offshore-democracy-or-argentina-through-looking-glass
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