We broadly agree. Is Christina Fernandez K disliked in Argentina? I'd be amazed if she wasn't...
Yeah, according to the polls, she is. Her popularity has been plummeting since 2008 with the conflict between the government and the agricultural sector. other things that happened in the past year also eroded her popularity, like her fights with her vicepresident (who, truth be told has been acting like the opposition), the nationalization of a pretty big part of social security and the cover up of actual inflation numbers (inflation isn't that high right now, but definitely higher than what the government reports) among others.
She was also seen as inefficient in dealing with some natural disasters that happened and now we have a dengue outbreak in the north that's threatening to advance to the south (Which is also not as bad as some people say though).
Our midterm elections were supposed to happen in October of this year, but they were reorganized and now will happen in June. Many are saying that this is a desperate attempt of the government that obviously fears the country will be far worse off at the end of the year than what it is today (The reality is that the global economic crisis hasn't really affected us that much so far, at least in tangible terms).
It's hard to predict what will happen in the next few months. Cristina will surely lose in the Buenos Aires capital district and probably in the large provinces of Santa Fe and Cordoba. Most of the other provinces are more Cristina friendly than the big ones so i have no idea how she'll fare there. The big prize will be the Buenos Aires province, which is the largest one (around 14 or 15 million people) and will be hotly contested by the opposition.
The problem with the opposition is that they don't have a a common ideology, most of them are just allied against the government. You have leftist elements (Like Elisa Carrio and some socialist parties) and you have a clearly right wing element (Like Businessman Francisco De Narvaez or Mauricio Macri). There are even some factions of the peronist party who will present candidates against the government and even the Union Civica Radical which was one of the 2 main parties in opposition to the Peronist party for most of the 20Th century are now pretty much divided between Pro-Government and Anti-Government factions. So it's really hard to predict how things will go in Congress, even with and unpopular president.
How i miss the days when there were only 2 main parties with the relatively strong third party challenge
However, i really believe that the present South American governments are among the best of the past 50 - 100 years. I mean, they are not perfect but just look at Argentina for instance. We had a lot of dictatorships, extremely corrupt governments and our economy has been in the tank more often than not. I'm not going to say that this government is completely clean and our economy is great, but the general feeling that i have is that it's a whole lot better than in the past decades, plus we are in a democracy and there is little to no chance of a military coup.
Countries like Brazil, Chile and Uruguay are doing pretty well with stable democracies, and looking at Bolivia's past governments I would say Morales looks like an improvement who at least seems to care about poor people in the country. Colombia also probably has it's best president in a while. And Peru, Ecuador and Paraguay are a lot more stable than before.
The only exception might be Chavez in Venezuela, but i won't instantly condemn the guy considering that he has a lot of popular support and i don't know a whole lot when it comes to venezuelan politics.
I hope people can understand my post, i always seem to rush myself when i write in english
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