Political Cambalache
Published by Esteban Glas on September 11th, 2007 | This post lacks all category except for: Argentina, personal
“Cambalache” is the trade of small value items. It is also a place where this trades happen, sort of like a flea market. The term is also used in Argentina as a synonym of mess, mainly due to the influence of the Tango by Enrique Santos Discepolo. In his lyrics the lack of traditional values and the fact that in the 20th century it doesn’t really matter if you are good or bad are depicted.
In Argentina elections are to be held this next October. Everything seems to indicate that the first lady is going to win quite easily the election for President. But here comes the mess. If you don’t understand a single thing about what you’re about to read, fear not, I don’t understand it myself.
The “UCR” is split up in two, half support the current government and the other half supports a former Economy minister of the same government, Lavagna. I think I should note here that neither the current government or Lavagna ever belonged to the UCR, quite on the contrary, they have always belonged to their political nemesis, the “Justicialistas” (or “Peronistas”). To make an analogy with the US, it would be like having the Democrats supporting Condoleezza Rice to run for office.
Wait, it gets more messy.
With this the main opposing party is the “PRO”, which recently won the major elections for the City of Buenos Aires. One would think that they would try to capitalize that in the upcoming presidential election. Wrong. That party supports different candidates in different places, so, they have one candidate in the city of Buenos Aires, but a different one in the Province of Buenos Aires…
The saddest part is not the mess, but the lack of real choices. There isn’t a single candidate I would think of voting for president this upcoming election. Which is a lot to state, since there are at least 12 different presidential formulas I know of.
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September 12th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Esteban,
We have perhaps 14 months until our presidential election, and the stage is full of people I really don’t trust or want to vote for. Perhaps worse, I have a hard time falling completely in step with the ideals of either of our two parties, although I’ll lean one way more than the other. People don’t divide neatly up into two lines. Like the legal system, the political system has long undertaken a life of it’s own. Early in the life of our country, governing at the senate level wasn’t a full time job - the positions were unpaid. People left their farms, went for 4,6, perhaps 8 weeks and did the business of the country, then went back to their lives until the next year. Now that we have made a whole career process of it, with lifetime health benefits, etc, well.. it seems the number of required new laws has expanded to fill the amount of time available, yet little really meaningful work gets done. Too much waste trying advance one’s own agenda while thwarting the other guy. At least that’s how it looks to a cynic who just watches the news. Of course, I think much of this is human characteristic, and large collections of people in business, religeon, or government exhibit similar behaviors.