You have to give it to the politicians: it is an incredible talent to speak for hours and not say a thing. Today I stood there, with thousands of Argentines, most of them paid to be there (the worker's union pays for a bus, gives them a snack and that is how a not-so-loved politician in the city gets the crowd to listen to what she will not say), in order to hear what the president of the nation, Christina F. de Kirshner say on the 20th day of the agro-paro (producers from the country side have stopped delivering food to the people after the President decided to raise an export tax to the loaded soy producers.)
She stood in front of the crowd, decked out as usual and managed to say absolutely nothing for 45 minutes. I stood there and watched her insulting the intelligence of millions of Argentines (most of them watching her at the comfort of their house, grinding their teeth). While I was listening to her lame words, I was eavesdropping the conversations of the crowd around me, mostly with very little dental hygene *missing multiple teeth* and realized how impossible it was to fix the world one more time.
I am sure everybody knows that this strike is nothing but a cover for something, most probably the upcoming raise for the consumer prices (we expect a steep %40) and that the extremely rich soy producers will probably benefit from this instead of suffering from the %9 raise in their export taxation given that the commodities prices are higher than ever these days and I heard that soy prices are about to go up a %15 due to the strike. And instead of pointing this out, the president stood there and said nothing worth listening. The speech was supposedly for us to be on her side, in this struggle for raising the taxes on rich for the good of poor, but she did not even use her one good defense to prove it?
My job as a reporter unfortunately does not give me the liberty to say how I actually feel about the situation or her show, or how much the worker's union spends every time they gather unemployed people from the slums (instead of building a school or a hospital for them) to come and attend these activities that people who work probably cannot attend. I wish I could (PS: if you have not seen the movie The Hunting Party please do, it is about a reporter who looses his brillant career when he actually says what he sees) but I know it is not professional nor ethical for a reporter to give their opinion. That is why they have their blogs!!!
