Perhaps Vice President Cristina Fernández’s imprisonment on corruption charges will finally prompt the country to give up its failed big-government policies.
Perhaps Vice President Cristina Fernández’s imprisonment on corruption charges will finally prompt the country to give up its failed big-government policies.
A nother Argentine leftist has bitten the dust.
Last week, Vice President Cristina Fernández was sentenced to six years in prison and handed a lifetime ban from holding public office after being convicted of embezzling some $1 billion through public-works projects — funded by Argentina’s struggling taxpayers — when she served as president from 2007 to 2015.
Unfortunately for ordinary Argentines, such left-wing government corruption has become the norm in recent decades. Fernández is the widow of Néstor Kirchner, who was the country’s president from 2003 to 2007. Kirchner installed a wide range of judicial officials who resorted to bribery and cronyism, saving himself and later Fernández from jail time and time again. Once she took over the top job, Fernández continued her late husband’s “legacy,” as several members of her administration became involved in corruption cases of their own.
According to prosecutor Diego Luciani, Fernández effectively served as the head of a criminal organization in one of history’s “most extraordinary corruption schemes.” Over nearly a decade, the $1 billion at issue in the case was awarded to construction magnate Lázaro Báez and his cronies for the completion of more than 50 road projects across the country, only half of which were finished during that period. That’s typical in a country run by aggressively inefficient labor unions.
In Argentina and in the United States, the blame game needs to be played honestly and without political bias. Fernández’s case is not just an example of bad government; it is a shocking display of left-wing hypocrisy, a continuation of Eva Perón’s brand of “do as I say, not as I do” politics.
Therein lies the ultimate tragedy of politicians such as the Peróns, Kirchner, and Fernández: They trick and exploit people in need of good governance to enrich themselves and their political allies. Because populists need the poor to keep themselves in power, they have every incentive to keep the poor in poverty. A theft of taxpayer funds as massive and brazen as Fernández’s thus kills two birds with one stone: It raises the bar for entry into Argentina’s left-wing elite while enriching the elite’s members.
The losers in this bargain, of course, are the people of Argentina, who have yet again been left to reckon with their leaders’ malfeasance and misgovernance. Fernández’s nanny state has saddled Argentines with nearly 90 percent annual inflation, as food and gas prices continue to soar. The country also still owes the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about $40 billion as part of a 2018 IMF bailout agreement.
Thankfully, there is reason to hope that perhaps the empty coffers, historic inflation rates, and ever-deeper distrust of government Fernández leaves behind will be a wake-up call for Argentina — that her downfall will be the push my country needs to finally get itself on the right track. After all, more than 60 percent of Argentines wanted Fernández removed from office, showing that there is a popular mandate for accountability, reform, and good governance.
If Fernández has brought Argentina to rock bottom, the good news is that there’s nowhere for the country to go but up.