Things can be made legal and done legally, even under a dictatorship. Even democracy is a kind of dictatorship, though not under the strictest sense of the word - a better word is authoritarian. The difference of how authoritarian either a dictatorship or a democracy is, is in degrees. Even true dictatorships can't exist indefinitely - they need the support of a good portion of the people, as many dictators have found out in history.
The institutions of this country are weak. I've read pieces by at least one Argentine legal scholar who has written about this (not to mention many others with the same opinion) - I'm certainly not the only one who thinks so. I've seen things first-hand (i.e., not someone just telling me a story, but have been involved) where TANJ (from one of my favorite science fiction writers, Larry Niven - There Ain't No Justice) for people who truly need it in Argentina.
A would-be queen who lies about things to make people believe that she has the answers and force those answers on the population is at least as bad a dictator as someone who lays out the problems and works towards resolving them. If you truly think that Macri is a dictator, then you are telling me that the institutions of this country are not truly strong enough to combat someone who is in power and abusing it, which makes those institutions indeed weak. Macri has been stopped from doing things that you are saying makes him a dictator. Maybe they are not as weak as I'm saying - when those who are in control of legal decisions are favoring one president over another. I know you've said that everything Cristina did was legal and was stopped when it wasn't, but I go back to legal not making things right anyway - an institution who allows one party to control everything is weak in democracy yet strong in authority.
I call Macri a dictator a bit tongue-in-cheek. Because I realize that he is not a dictator until he seizes control of the apparatus of state through force - since he doesn't have control of lawmakers like Cristina did (who, BTW, had an awful lot of control of the apparatus of state). I was comparing him to a dictator of Rome, who in those times was given a mandate from the Senate (and there was no real universal democracy in Rome in the Republic - it was the Patrician families who had most of the power, exercised through the Senate) to do things that critically needed to be done.
If you accept that Macri is a dictator, given that he has not taken the state over by force and even when confronted by legal powers has not purged those who ruled against him, you must accept that Cristina was a dictator as well. Neither one of them had or have absolute rule (the definition of a dictator). One lied and paid people to get votes (yeah, I know people personally who were visited by people giving away food for votes for Cristina) and stacked the government with useless people and such that the government couldn't afford, not to mention doing everything she could to ensure that the next government would be hampered in their efforts no matter the change of mandate from the people. The other one has tried some things and had some successes and tried others and has been rebuffed by the legal system.
The electrician that is working on our kitchen is a pretty smart guy, and not just because I happen to agree with his politics. He thinks Macri knew exactly what he can and can't get away with, but is stirring the hornet's nest (the electrician's exact words), specifically with the two supreme court judges. He's making waves and making people worried - but at the end of the day, what has he actually done that was illegal, has been called on it, and proceeded with force?
Macri is no more a dictator in the true sense of the word than Cristina was, though they may both be wanna-be dictators. True, I happen to think that Macri's brand of politics is better for the country (and myself, to be sure) and I'm willing to cut him a bit more slack than I was Cristina, who I believe was a power-hungry, greedy shark who had no real interest in "the people", at best.
Agree with everything. Especially the analysis re the dictator part.
Your electrician friend hit the nail on the head, I'm tempted to think. He's screwing with people. Regarding the practical, at this point, Macri has done nothing over the heads of a judge. So the whole dictator part is pure sophistry.
I'm copying my huge edit from my last post - where the conversation had already moved on - to this new one:
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EDIT: As so often happens, while I waited to click 'post', Queso beat me to the punch. And put it better than I ever could.
Regarding some of bajo's rebuttals:
1)
Most of the time I waste was explaining the law, the background and the history in this country.
I am way too tired to look stuff up (our little argument regarding the Constitution and traspaso de poder is a fine but by no means unique example), but a lot of your rationalizing went rather further than just "explaining what is the law, the background and the history in this country".
There was and is a lot of rationalizing legalizing that only makes sense given an ideological bias. Which is fine. Just admit it.
3) What?!
Really, what??? Hellooooooooo? Clapper seal adoring crowd fanboy drama wood on knock WHAAATTT?
The man is thirty-one calendar days into his term, and somebody writes, and I quote:
3) Well, until now Macri failed to fulfill all his promises, besides to open the cepo to the usd and to lift retenciones to wheat.
What??????
And in a way, this little turd is actually the point of the whole thing. Implementing most, if not all of Macri's promises (beyond ending the cepo) require having normal institutions. Everything about stuff over here is not normal. Not normal to such an extent, that I suspect that often enough bajo, when explaining the unexplainable, simply doesn't get that "Huh?" factor about a ton of this stuff. For example - most of CFK's activity between 22 Nov and 9 Dec. (Appointing ambassadors? Really?) And fixing all or even much of it - at the government rank and file level - will require drastic, yes perhaps dictatorial (in the conceptual sense) action.
Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and started firing people left and right. They made a word for it - getting "Steved". Lore says that people were afraid to bump into him in an elevator, because by the time they walk out of the elevator they might not have a job. Were everybody incompetent? Presumably not - Apple was a multi-billion-dollar-revenue company even at its nadir. But corporate culture was rotten and needed urgent fixing.
Was Steve Jobs a dictator? To a large extent. Could the board vote at any moment to lock him out of the building the next day? Probably.
Can you do to a country what was done at a US company? Possibly not. Does bajo like drastic action? No. But to
then turn around and accuse the man of not fulfilling his campaign promises?
Take the fugitives' drama. The penitentiary and security services probably need half the workforce dismissed, just as a start. Can you imagine processing each pink slip with half-year-long sessions and administrative stuff? If Indec requires that, why not General Alvear et al?
Bajo has it exactly backwards when he asks "How can he strengthen the institutions if he is attacking them?" On the contrary, past a certain point - when a building is structurally deficient - you
can't improve things, let alone add floors, without knocking things down. And bajo's premise, as El Queso correctly notes and as I couldn't, is all about giving due deference to Argentina's current institutions when they have already proven themselves woefully incapable of keeping Argentina afloat, let alone great. That things could get to where they are now, from Aerolineas Argentinas to General Alvear et al to Indec to the poverty level to the inflation , is a damning enough indictment of the law-based order that people are willing to cut some slack to someone who seems to be making the right moves.
The deference accorded the law is a function of society's expectation that such adherence will keep things at least somewhat sane: in Argentina this has already proven not to be the case. So outright breaking the law is one thing - which we haven't seen yet, and which we'll discuss if/when we do - but pushing as hard as possible? Fine with me. And we know why it's not fine with you.
All of Macri's promises revolved basically around two words. Restoring Sanity. This is exactly what bajo et al are fighting.
4/5) Yes, normally national constitutions don't include provisions for situations where things are FUBAR. And in Argentina's history, dictatorships did not solve the problems either. But one reads the conversation between bajo and Queso as follows:
Bajo: Macri's a dictator. CFK wasn't half as bad.
Queso: They're both undemocratic when it suits them. At least Macri's pulling things in the right direction.
Bajo: Great, you've admitted Macri's a dictator.
Queso: I said they're both the same as regards legality, and Macri makes some sense.
Bajo: That's the dictatorship of happiness. Welcome.
Queso: ...
However Macri is the NEW Magnetto according to Victor Hugo...