Aregentine President Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner on Saturday used the first news conference by an Argentine president in five years to defend her government after facing the biggest political crisis of her eight-month-old presidency.
Fernandez was dealt a major blow last month when she was forced to drop a plan to raise taxes on the country’s vital grain exports after the Senate rejected it following four months of protests by farmers.
Despite the turmoil the proposal created, she expressed no regrets.
“I would do it again,” she told more than 200 reporters who gathered for the rare news conference.
“For the first time since returning to democracy [in 1983], the institutions were able to seriously discuss ... a law that for the first time relates to the redistribution of income,” Fernandez said.
Fernandez took office in December after a long Senate career, succeeding her husband Nestor Kirchner, who never held a news conference in his four years in power.
Analysts called it part of her strategy to regain political footing after her sharp fall in popularity and key political defeat in the four-month farming crisis.
Some polls put her approval ratings at 20 percent.
Fernandez denied opposition claims that her husband runs her presidency.
“Comments of that nature come from a biased reading of reality,” she said of claims that Kirchner is still running the government. “We’re simply a political team that has worked for a long time with the same vision and common ideas about the society we want.”
She imposed the grain-import taxes in March to encourage farmers to sell grains locally rather than at soaring export prices.
The taxes sparked protests, road blockades and sporadic food shortages.
They were defeated in a surprise Senate vote last month, with Fernandez’s own vice president casting the deciding vote.
Fernandez said high agricultural profits in the face of soaring world food prices still “should be taken up as an instrument of economic policy.”
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not