IKN

“The famous arrogance of the Argentines does have
its ups and down, of course. Sometimes they believe
themselves to be the most important in Latin America
and sometimes merely the most important in the world.”
Les Luthiers*

Argentina goes to the polls this weekend in its parliamentary elections. Up for grabs are about half the seats in the Deputies chamber (lower house) and about a third in the Senate (upper house). I haven’t mentioned much about the election on the blog in the build-up to the big day. The decision not to cover the hoo-hah has been deliberate, even though I’ve been following the media coverage closely. The reason is that although it’s a stern test for the Kirchner wing of the Peronist PJ party and there are some (for Argentina) semi-important to not-so-important side issues such as the battle for the left (Solanas vs Carrio) and the rise of the right in Buenos Aires Capital (Macri and Co).…it’s really not that important a vote.

This despite what they might believe in Argentina, of course. Today we have this report quoting one of the leading “Mothers of Plaza de Mayo” (the mothers of the disappeared association) Hebe de Bonafini as she calls on people to vote pro-Kirchner:

“This Sunday we cannot make a mistake. Our future and the future of our children depends on what happens over the next few days in the country, but also the direction that Latin America will take depends on it.”

This is the typical Argentine bullshit, of course. It’s very tough to make them believe that they don’t matter in the great scheme of things, so rather than report all the claptrap these last weeks (the above is pretty typical, by the way) I’ve just ignored it. Let ’em vote, get it done, goodbye.