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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 2, 2015 16:27:29 GMT
What a shower of arseholes.
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Post by Merseymike on Oct 4, 2015 11:10:24 GMT
Scioli. For the reasons indicated above - that he is the candidate of the left best placed to win.
Not bothered about Las Malvinas
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 4, 2015 11:43:58 GMT
Macri, with a peg on my nose.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 4, 2015 11:45:39 GMT
Scioli. For the reasons indicated above - that he is the candidate of the left best placed to win. Not bothered about Las Malvinas You might get a nasty shock then, as Scioli is nowhere near as left-wing as the popular imagination has it. As you'd expect from the former head of Electrolux in Argentina. |
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Post by Merseymike on Oct 4, 2015 11:52:34 GMT
Scioli. For the reasons indicated above - that he is the candidate of the left best placed to win. Not bothered about Las Malvinas You might get a nasty shock then, as Scioli is nowhere near as left-wing as the popular imagination has it. As you'd expect from the former head of Electrolux in Argentina. I'm under no illusions - he is a Peronist after all! But he would defend progressive social legislation and is the best bet who has a chance of winning. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 4, 2015 11:55:32 GMT
It should be noted that Kirchner has attempted to undermine Scioli by delaying a transfer of federal funds to BA province before backing down. And then tried to undermine Macri during a dispute on BA's metro.
What her game is at the moment is a mystery.
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 4, 2015 11:58:55 GMT
You might get a nasty shock then, as Scioli is nowhere near as left-wing as the popular imagination has it. As you'd expect from the former head of Electrolux in Argentina. I'm under no illusions - he is a Peronist after all! But he would defend progressive social legislation and is the best bet who has a chance of winning. He is going to need to break the relationship between the government and the football criminals before it spirals even further out of control. It's quite terrifying how football criminal gangs have been given power in wider society. Peron would be turning in his grave. |
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 15,785 
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Post by john07 on Oct 4, 2015 12:00:29 GMT
How many of the candidates are Peronists?
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 4, 2015 15:50:58 GMT
Macri, with a peg on my nose. As a matter of interest are their any Latin American political parties that you could vote for without a peg on the nose. I was looking at that question myself. In most countries there my instinct would be to vote tactically against Foro de São Paulo and other leftist parties but I'm having difficulties seeing any parties I could vote for with much enthusiasm. Maybe the Democrats in Brazil, but otherwise an awful lot give off a Pasok smell, if you catch my drift. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Oct 6, 2015 8:49:24 GMT
You might get a nasty shock then, as Scioli is nowhere near as left-wing as the popular imagination has it. As you'd expect from the former head of Electrolux in Argentina. I'm under no illusions - he is a Peronist after all! But he would defend progressive social legislation and is the best bet who has a chance of winning. So the logic in Argentina is... while in the UK ? ..... |
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Post by Merseymike on Oct 6, 2015 9:59:09 GMT
I'm under no illusions - he is a Peronist after all! But he would defend progressive social legislation and is the best bet who has a chance of winning. So the logic in Argentina is... while in the UK ? ..... Exactly the same. I even voted for Blair in 05. But when there is a possibility of better..... |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 7, 2015 21:23:26 GMT
Afraid I'm no expert by any means- I keep an eye on Brazil but the rest is a mystery to me.
I'm under the impression that Mercosur isn't much discussed but that's just from what I have seen.
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Hash
Non-Aligned
Posts: 116
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Post by Hash on Oct 8, 2015 17:52:22 GMT
In Colombia President Uribe had a very successful record restoring order to Colombia and fighting the FARC terrorists with a policy of no negotiation and seeking a military solution to the FARC terrorist crisis. After he left office his successor President Santos abandoned this policy and went back to the old failed policy of having 'peace process' with FARC i.e. seeking to compromise with the terrorists rather than defeat them. When this happened Uribe and others opposed to this appeasement formed the Democratic Cntre Party. I'm sorry, but that's a very biased, simplistic, naive and rather inaccurate understanding the situation. |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 8, 2015 18:27:47 GMT
I read an interesting thing earlier today suggesting that most of the left-wing Peronists of today would have found themselves being given a beating by Peron's goons.
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 15,785
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Post by john07 on Oct 9, 2015 0:06:15 GMT
I'm sorry, but that's a very biased, simplistic, naive and rather inaccurate understanding the situation. I take it you voted for Santos' re-election. I would be interested to know why you, as a Colombian, think I'm wrong about this. I'm not an expert on Colombian politics so would be interested to learn more. What do you think would be the best party/candidate for a right wing anti-communist like myself to vote for? I am sure there are plenty of right-wing death squads from the region that would meet your approval. |
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Hash
Non-Aligned
Posts: 116
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Post by Hash on Oct 9, 2015 4:13:38 GMT
I'm sorry, but that's a very biased, simplistic, naive and rather inaccurate understanding the situation. I take it you voted for Santos' re-election. I would be interested to know why you, as a Colombian, think I'm wrong about this. I'm not an expert on Colombian politics so would be interested to learn more. What do you think would be the best party/candidate for a right wing anti-communist like myself to vote for? I'm not Colombian, but I've been living in this country for a while and I've read a lot (from local and foreign authors) about the whole story, so I still know what I'm talking about. My point wasn't to dispute that you'd root for Uribe's gang, which is probably a good choice for some of your ideological persuasion, but mostly because I felt that your whole analysis/understanding of the situation was biased, simplistic and fairly inaccurate. Indeed, Uribe did have a successful record as far as security goes, and that's something most people can agree on. However, the major security improvements weren't only due to the military offensive against the FARC. It was due to the 'demobilization' of the far-right paramilitaries who were terrifyingly brutal psychopaths who committed far more atrocities and killed far more than the FARC have; the neo-paramilitary like Bacrims which have taken their place have not been as powerful or wide-reaching in their violence as the paramilitaries were. The military offensive against the FARC was successful (only post-2006), but only in so far as the military successfully forced them into a defensive position (and with some difficulty) into remote hard-to-reach regions of the country and killed the threat they posed to large urban centres (debilitating their capacity to commit attacks in Bogotá or dismantling their urban fronts in places like Medellín) and the most urbanized/developed regions of the country. The idea that the FARC can/could be militarily defeated, however, is a fantasy and most people know that -- for reasons related to their nature as a guerrilla force, the geography of the regions where they operate and their history. After Uribe left office in 2010 or when the Havana talks began in 2012, the FARC where nowhere close to being 'militarily defeated'. The military solution was successful, but can only be successful up to a certain extent. As for the peace process, it's a complex issue where I can understand that there can be major concerns and obviously there's significant distrust, even now, about the FARC's commitment or their post-conflict demobilization (which nobody pretends will be complete). A lot of it is indeed related to the fact that peace talks since the La Uribe peace deals in the 1980s and especially the Caguán frack-up in 1999-2002 failed. The FARC hold a great deal of responsibility for the failure of these talks, it's undeniable. However, one can't deny the government's responsibility in the failure of these talks or the role of other factors which pushed the FARC into a fight-to-the-last-man radicalism. After the La Uribe peace deals in 1985 (or 1986, I can't remember) under Belisario Betancourt, the political front created by the FARC (la UP) was literally mowed down - paramilitaries, the cartels and oftentimes with the complicity of the government killed over 1,000 UP members including 2 presidential candidates and several of their congressmen. It played a huge role in radicalizing the FARC in the 1990s, because they saw that they couldn't trust the government. While the failure of Caguán owes more to the FARC than it does to the state, it doesn't help that at the same time as Pastrana was talking to the FARC, his government was signing off on Plan Colombia, the massive US "counternarcotics" militarist plan which had mediocre results at best and which was widely seen by the FARC/the left as a sneaky Colombian-US plan to bomb the FARC (which isn't an entirely inaccurate reading of it). The FARC's current boss Timoshenko had an interesting interview in El Espectador this weekend, in which he said that he viewed the Caguán talks as a dishonest government strategy to regroup and rearm given the army's weakness in 1998 (indeed - the army and Colombia was in a pretty shitty state back then, and the FARC was very strong) - it's a revealing view, and one which is hard to completely disagree with; although should point out that the FARC went into Caguán very reluctantly and took full advantage of the government's bad strategy to regroup and rearm on their own to the point where they were stronger than ever before by 2002. These peace talks - mostly Caguán - also failed because the government made several mistakes, like conceding a huge DMZ to the FARC in 1999 and renewing it on naive and foolish hopes that the FARC would play nice and sit down. There's a reason why the current talks are being held in Cuba and not in Colombia... I would also disagree with your contention that Santos went back to "the old failed policy of having a 'peace process' with the FARC" - that's never been the policy of any pre-Uribe government except arguably perhaps Pastrana (but even he continued the war against the FARC during Caguán). Let's not forget how this whole horror began - by the military attacking Marquetalia in 1964 (I don't want to get into that, but it should be pointed out), or by the Conservative governments of Ospina Pérez and Gómez giving unofficial support to far-right death squads to kill Liberals. I also think that the current peace process is different from previous ones and offers the first real chance at some kind of 'peace' or at least an incomplete end to the conflict in one way or another. Santos isn't a naive idiot - he's a very intelligent guy who knows what he's doing. He hasn't made the mistakes of past governments, and even the FARC recognize that and for the first time ever they seem to have some level of trust in the government which is historic, and as far as I'm concerned, a positive development. Santos has played the peace process rather well - he's made mistakes along the way, notably earlier this year, but that's to be expected - and he's understood the several dimensions of the conflict. While he knows that it's an unrealistic fantasy to 'defeat them', he waited until the FARC had been pushed into a corner like never before (by the deaths of Raúl Reyes, Manuel Marulanda, Mono Jojoy and Alfonso Cano; by diplomatic developments etc.), unlike in 1998 or even the 1980s. As I said in the beginning, we kind of need to admit that Uribe's policies were fairly successful even if we dislike the guy. At the same time, you need to take into account that his presidency was also was characterized by incredible amounts of corruption and abuse of power at the top, a problematic demobilization process with the paramilitaries, one of the largest corruption scandals in recent Colombian history ( parapolítica), blatant disrespect for judicial independence and clear autocratic tendencies not unlike those you can see in left-wing autocrats à la Chávez which Uribe loves to hate (in Uribe's case, Colombia is lucky that its democratic institutions and especially courts are stronger and more robust than those in Venezuela; else we could still be talking of President Uribe) -- and this isn't even to mention Uribe before 2002, like his extremely problematic support for the Convivir idea (basically 'private security' or 'civilian vigilantes' forces legalized by the government - until the ConCourt blocked it; i.e. legalized death squads and drug traffickers) of 1994 or his family's close ties to the Medellín cartel and paramilitaries in Antioquia (a landowning family in Antioquia in the 1980s and 1990s pretty much cannot by definition be clean). Uribe's opposition to the Havana peace talks I can definitely understand to a certain extent, but I can't help but feel that he's being hypocritical, given that many have pointed out how Santos' early framework for negotiations was very close to the Uribe administration's own; or that President No Negotiations until Demobilization held secret talks with the ELN. His sudden newfound concern for victims is nice, but very hypocritical and disingenuous given that his government didn't give a crap about victims. His criticisms of the recent FARC-government deal on transitional justice is also very disingenuous as it could be said that it's an improved version of Uribe's own justice and peace law for the 2003-2006 demobilization of the paramilitaries. His criticism of the guerrillas and military being judged on the same platform is nice on paper, but I obviously think that military officers who committed/ordered/covered up/promoted awful human rights abuses (look up falsos positivos) should be judged just like guerrillas who did the exact same (and that's definitely me being a foolish optimist). I won't even bother to comment on Uribe's nonsense about Santos delivering the country to the terrorists. Anyway very sorry to derail this thread, I'd be glad to carry on with this in another thread. Sorry for my rambling on, don't mind me. |
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mboy
Liberal
Listen. Think. Speak.
Posts: 23,706
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Post by mboy on Oct 26, 2015 9:36:48 GMT
Given what a shock this appears to be, is it fair to say that the Argentine media are a bit blinkered?
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 26, 2015 16:27:15 GMT
I would agree. Kirchner and chums are fairly divisive, so it's not impossible that Scioli won't pick up that many more who haven't already voted for him.
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john07
Labour & Co-operative
Posts: 15,785
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Post by john07 on Oct 26, 2015 19:32:12 GMT
Map of the Provinces won by each candidate  Why no Malvinas on the map? |
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Post by Devil Wincarnate on Oct 26, 2015 23:46:10 GMT
It's terribly sad that Argentina once looked like it would become a rich,stable democracy, only to then suffer a century of scoundrels, arseholes, murderers, chancers, Peron, Menem and De La Rua plus assorted generals who'd never seen a battlefield but knew how to to torture people.
What a waste of potential.
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