Monday 17 September 2012

Argentine "middle class" protest Kirchner policies

Thousands of Argentines protested in Buenos Aires and other cities on 13 September, banging metal pots and pans in the Latin American tradition, against crime rates and the leftist policies of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, media reported. Her officials dismissed the protests as confined to a wealthy minority and "addicts" of the country's right-wing dictatorship of the 1970s. Tens of thousands were thought to have protested at the invitation of Internet pages such as Twitter or Facebook, venting frustration with issues including foreign-exchange controls, insecurity and rumoured plans for constitutional reforms to allow Kirchner to serve a third presidential term from 2015, Reuters reported. There is a two-term limit set by the law, and Reuters observed the government had not so far declared any plan to reform the constitution. The reactions of the president's allies were almost contemptuous: Senator Aníbal Fernández of the Justicialist Party - the political home of several past presidents - said the protests were "put together by professionals" and "fake identities" on the Internet had convened protesters, the daily Clarín reported on 17 September. The head of the rights group Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo (Asociación Madres de la Plaza de Mayo) Hebe de Bonafini issued a communiqué published on 16 September in Tiempo Argentino denouncing the protesters as people who had "cheered" the military dictatorship and were "happy" to see it "kidnap and kill" its opponents;" they "are disgusting," her statement read. Bonafini told a radio station on 17 September that "the people are something else. The pots they were banging were not like the ones we have at home, made of aluminium, dented and charred," La Nación reported. The government's Cabinet Chief Juan Manuel Abal Medina said on 14 September that the government was not bothered by the protests. He told a television programme on 16 September that protesters were "sectors that do not tolerate egalitarian policies" or the government's "inclusive project" meant to benefit "40 million Argentines," La Nación reported. He said Argentina did not have "like elsewhere in the world a strong right-wing party to channel certain demands," for which reason its partisans formerly turned to "the barracks" - the army - and now use "the mass media."

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