Argentine Senate votes against hike in farm tariffs
The vice president casts the deciding vote against the new export tax, already in effect and causing protests. The initiative would have prevented court challenges and forced farmers to comply.
BUENOS AIRES — The farm crisis that has divided the agricultural powerhouse of Argentina for months took a dramatic turn Thursday, when the Senate voted against the government's incendiary new tax on grain exports.
The decisive vote was cast by the government's own vice president after an 18-hour Senate debate, stunning observers and igniting a political crisis.
The higher grain levies have been in effect via presidential edict, despite questions about their constitutionality. The failed congressional initiative, legal scholars said, would have inoculated the taxes from court challenges and left farmers with little choice but to comply. Instead, the divisive debate will continue.
"This must be the most difficult day of my life," the visibly exhausted vice president, Julio Cobos, declared before casting the crucial ballot about 4:30 a.m. against the bill championed by his boss, President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. "Let history judge me."
His vote broke a 36-36 deadlock and dealt a humiliating defeat to Kirchner and her husband, ex-President Nestor Kirchner, who have been at virtual war with the prosperous agricultural sector since March. That's when the president, a self-styled champion of the working class and the left, decreed a new sliding-scale hike in export duties on soybeans and other grains.
The tax was designed to generate more revenue for social projects in Argentina, the government says, from the global bonanza in grain exports, especially sales of soy to Asia and Europe. Argentina, with its vast Pampas, is a leading producer of soy, corn, wheat and beef, and the nation has benefited from soaring global food prices. The government said the tax was also meant to encourage the planting of wheat and corn, staples here, instead of export crops such as soy.
But farmers balked and staged a series of strikes, blocking roads and refusing to ship their crops. Many middle-class urban Argentines sided with their revolt in what has become a kind of civil uprising against the Kirchners and their perceived autocratic ways. Homemakers banged pots and pans in city streets in noisy solidarity with the farmers.
Criticism of the first couple has mounted amid rising prices that have eroded the Kirchners' principal political capital -- their role in guiding the country to robust growth after the 2001-02 economic collapse. The Kirchners say reports of runaway inflation of 20% or more are exaggerated, though many consumers disagree.
