Impeachment

[HenryNisental]

Sorry to imply that "Tricy Dicky" was a minor criminal, but were are comparing a simple case of a high level cover up of a bungled wiretap operation with the sacking and robbing of an entire country (as these people are performing now), constant violation of the written Constitution, ignoring existing laws and even the decisions of the Supreme Court, attacks to the free press, etc.

 

[Bajo_cero2]

"Juicio político" exists in principle, but in practice the mobs simply force the government to escape the Casa Rosada by helicopter. Nixon was not, by the way, a minor criminal.

I agree with you.
Macri is under federal prosecution for "copying" Nixxon.

 

[Bajo_cero2]

Sorry to imply that "Tricy Dicky" was a minor criminal, but were are comparing a simple case of a high level cover up of a bungled wiretap operation with the sacking and robbing of an entire country (as these people are performing now), constant violation of the written Constitution, ignoring existing laws and even the decisions of the Supreme Court, attacks to the free press, etc.

Well, they are robbing so much that there are 40 billion dollars in the AR banks accounts.

Here is a missunderstanding about corruption. Corrupt governments loves to take international loans because it is easy to robb that money.

Menem was the most corrupt Democratic President. Videla the most corrupted dictator.
The international debt rise 90 billion dollars during those administrations (180 billions). They robbed billions.

My sister is a scientist of CONICET. They took a loan at the world bank for her project. An agent from Maria Julia (menem ecology minister) showed up with half of the money but she supposed to sign for the 100 %. She didn't.

Real corruption in AR robbs 50% of the budget and worst, they take loans to robb what we don t have.

So, i think that the real criminal are those who wants to get to power to robb those 40 billion dollars.

By the way, there was a K minister of economy who was fired, prosecuted and sentenced during this administration (remember the bag of money in tha toilet) while during Menem's administration all the witneses of the corruption scandals died in weird accidents (IBM Banco Nacion)
I worked the mega case about the traffic of weapons were Menem was under prosecution and the whole administration. ALL the witneses died in weird circumstances ALL.

So, I believe you see too much Lanata.

 

[EdRooney]

I very much doubt that. A charismatic enough leader could easily get way with serious murder pretty much anywhere in LATAM. Most military dictatorships in the region were WELCOMED by the population when the coups took place. Drop a few bombs here and there, blame on some terrorist, and if you are convincing enough, the crowd will applaud as the rule of law and civil liberties are flushed down the toilet. You have some serious misconception or idealizations about LATAM.

This is an utter falsehood, in total contradiction of the historical record. Coups that are accepted by the majority do not need mass disappearances and states of siege as did Videla, Pinochet, Ríos Montt et al. Certainly there is always an element of the monied interests that welcome a coup d'état, as was the case in Czechoslovakia, Iraq, Poland, El Salvador and Argentina, and just about anywhere else., but they are the MINORITY, and that is why the perpetrators needed violence to enforce their rule. You will always have somebody welcoming a non-popular conqueror, as has happened every time in every invasion or coup in history. This does not make them popular governments. Your statement has no relation to any case in history.

 

[camberiu]

This is an utter falsehood, in total contradiction of the historical record.

Were you here during any of these dictatorships? I was. I was born under one. When the coups happened, be in Brazil or Argentina, the majority saw it as the military bringing back "order and stability". Fear came later, much later, when people realized that the brutality of the regimes was not restricted towards the communist insurgents. Why do you think these dictatorships felt? They ran out of bullets? No, they simply lost the support they had, that is all.

 

[WindyCityJames]

Richard Nixon was NOT impeached. He resigned before the House had an opportunity to file articles of impeachment against him, to avoid the inevitable. Only two presidents have been impeached: Andrew Johnson and William J. Clinton. Both Presidents were acquitted at their Senate trials.

 

[EdRooney]

Listen I definitely get where you are coming from; I can still see people today who would certainly support a radical change of government and even violent measures to do so. You will find that in any country at any time. But that is the great farce of theatrics like the pro-K marches or the recent "cacerolazos" or whatever. They do not replace true barometers of public opinion like free and fair elections.

Seeing a mob of tens of thousands in Plaza de Mayo cheering Videla in '78 does not in any way mean he had the support of a country of tens of millions of people. That is why I will repeat my point: truly popular governments have never ever throughout history needed to resort to these types of draconian measures. To say otherwise smacks very much of saying "those dumb Latin Americans are too stupid to pick leaders on their own." If this were truly the case, gobs of money from the CIA and the monied classes here would not have been necessary to push so hard against true LatAm democracy.

 

[Gringoboy]

In the UK it's known as a vote of no confidence.
Does that exist here?

 

[AngelinBA]

Well, good old NZ fired one MP for purchasing an $80 pair of silk boxers with govt money, and jailed another for using govt funds for her stomach stapling operation. I haven't been back in so long, don't know what they would do with a Watergate / boudou type corruption.

 

[jblawton]

I very much doubt that. A charismatic enough leader could easily get way with serious murder pretty much anywhere in LATAM. Most military dictatorships in the region were WELCOMED by the population when the coups took place. Drop a few bombs here and there, blame on some terrorist, and if you are convincing enough, the crowd will applaud as the rule of law and civil liberties are flushed down the toilet. You have some serious misconception or idealizations about LATAM.

A charismatic enough leader can get away with many things far beyond the borders of LatAm, maybe not mass-murder, but there are many ways of being violent. Arguably, obligating people to support a street rally under the threat of losing their job, income and food for their families is a form of violence... may not threaten directly their life, but it does threaten liberty, pursuit of happiness, and the lives of their families.

The association between these governments' "popularity" and the level of violence employed by their supporters may have correlation but this doesn't imply causality (i.e., governments didn't act violently just because people would allow it, they did when they had no intelligent choice left). The main reasons people were tolerant of these regimes were fear (which relies not on extreme physical violence, it suffices to have people fearing for their subsistence), ignorance of these governments' actions (think pre-internet, where media control was much easier), and also expectations (the fact that some measure of violence was necessary for them to get into power in the first place makes it bearable for people to see some degree of violence as a possibly necessary evil). I would say that the level of violence used by these governments actually escalated as popular support wore down, transforming voluntary popular support into "holy-crap-I-have-no-choice" popular support. At some point, popular tolerance was broken and these governments lost outright support, even of those masses who depended on the government for their subsistence.

There should not be a need to label LatAm as a region of blind, heartless, absolutely stupid people who have nothing better to do but cheer for an Uzi-wielding murderous government (Romans pretty much covered the quota for that segment, except for the anachronistic Uzi part). I respect your inside knowledge of the problem, but generalizing goes a bit far. In Panama, Noriega was popular across some population segments, doesn't mean people loved him, they just had no true feasible choice and were afraid of the alternative. Serious misconceptions can go both ways.