Argentine VP Shoots Down Farm Export Tax

The Argentine government found itself in a very interesting position this week. The administration of Cristina Fernandez decreed in March a tax on farm exports, which the legislature has been debating after farmers protested so vehemently that the president couldn’t rely on her powers of decree alone. The Senate in Buenos Aires discussed the proposal for 17 hours on Wednesday. In the end the government lost 37-36, and the deciding vote came from Vice President Julio Cobos, theoretically Ms. Fernandez’s ally.

With food prices rising around the world, farmers in Argentina stood to make themselves a few pesos by selling produce on the global market. Rising food prices, though, are tough on lower-income urban dwellers. To protect them, the government decided to tax food exports to keep the produce in Argentina, thereby keeping supply up and prices lower than they would otherwise be. That’s what annoyed the farmers.

Mr. Cobos was a true profile in courage as he broke the tie, “I think today is the most difficult day of my life. They tell me I must go along with the government for institutional reasons, but my heart tells me otherwise. May history judge me, my vote is not for, it’s against.” Regardless of how one views the issue, there is no act more beautiful in politics than when a man puts his nation intersets first, as he perceives them to be.

Mr. Cobos is a member of the Radical Civic Union Party, which has traditionally opposed the Peronist Party to which Ms. Fernandez belongs, but was convinced to take the number two slot for national unity's sake. Mr. Cobos wiggled a bit in saying, ” I know I form part of this government and that I come from another political sector. This allows me to dissent or differ on some things. It’s called plurality.” All the same, he’s provoked something of a crisis in the government.

Ms. Fernandez is, of course, the wife of her predecessor Nestor Kirchner, who got the legislature to grant him “super powers” to alter the budget without referring to the representatives of the people. This power couple now may see that there is a limit to their power. Eduardo Buzzi, president of the Agrarian Federation in Argentina, told Bloomberg, “We can’t accept authoritarianism as a form of management.” There was a time in Argentina when the generals would step in at this stage. They are quietly sitting in their barracks now, and that is progress.

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