Cablevisión plans to offer a total of 20 HD channels by the end of the year and 30 by mid 2011.

Cablevisión chief executive Carlos Moltini confirmed the plans to The Argentine Post last week after a meeting with local bloggers.

Argentina’s leading cable TV provider is also working on plans to offer much faster download speeds to customers of its Fibertel Internet service.

Fibertel will offer Internet downloads speeds up to 10x faster than those currently available, Moltini said in the meeting. The company will offer the faster service by deploying the so-called DOCSIS 3.0 modem technology already used in the U.S.

Moltini said Cablevisión is technically close to being able to deploy the new technology. But it’s unclear exactly when the faster broadband service will be launched.

Cablevisión, owned by the multimedia giant Grupo Clarín, is under heavy attack from the government, which accuses it of operating without a proper broadband license.

As a result, the company is concerned that launching the service now might be interpreted as a political move rather than a simple product launch.

Moltini said the company’s license is perfectly legal and that the government is simply using the license issue as an excuse to attack the media company and curb freedom of the press in Argentina.

The government has repeatedly accused Grupo Clarín, and the newspaper La Nación, of coup-mondering through biased reporting.

Last week the government announced plans to take over the nation’s newspaper production industry, saying this is necessary to ensure freedom of the press.

Critics have said the move is merely an attempt to silence voices that question the wisdom of government policies.

As for the Internet, Moltini said the government has never shown any interest in making broadband access more available.

“If they really cared about Internet access, they would lower the import taxes on all the equipment we have to buy to improve the network,” Moltini said.

*Photo: Cablevisión’s Carlos Moltini explaining the the company’s history and its acquisition of cable and broadband operating licenses in Argentina.

Argentine Planning Minister Julio De Vido said Monday that the government will install free WiFi in public places around in the country within four months.

The news comes just days after De Vido announced that the government would give Fibertel, one of the country’s leading broadband providers, 90 days to shut down.

Critics will likely interpret the WiFi announcement as a last minute move designed to win favor amid what seems to be a massive rejection of the plan to kill Fibertel.

If installing free WiFi hotspots around the country were such a good idea, some may ask, why is the government announcing this now, just days after it said it would kill Fibertel?

People love free WiFi. But it’s unclear if the news will reduce concern about the decision to kill Fibertel. De Vido sought to assuage that concern in a radio interview.

“People shouldn’t be worried at all about this,” De Vido said. “There are 389 Internet providers around the country. People aren’t going to have any problems getting a better service and even for less money. There are an infinity of providers that are able to offer this service. I absolutely guarantee that not one customer will end up without service. We’re not going to cut anyone’s service off.”

De Vido himself was a Fibertel customer until a few days ago, when the newspaper Clarin published the personal email address of his wife. Fibertel and Clarin are both owned by the multimedia conglomerate Grupo Clarin.

“At no time will customers have to suffer a traumatic end to their service,” De Vido said, acknowledging that it took him “an entire afternoon” to let contacts know that he had changed his personal Fibertel email address.

“We’re going to work very hard in the next 120 days to install WiFi around the country,” De Vido said. “Everybody is going to be able to take their notebooks to plazas and other areas to do their work. We’re going to have enormous spaces with free Internet, first in big cities and later in smaller towns.”

De Vido said Fibertel has to be shut down because it is illegally operating without an appropriate license. An experienced corporate attorney told The Argentine Post, however, that, Grupo Clarin will probably not have to stop offering Internet through Fibertel.

The battle over Fibertel will end up in court and Clarin will likely win, the attorney said.

Whatever the case, here’s hoping that those free WiFi hotspots do show up at some point.

Grupo Clarin had previously opposed plans by the City of Buenos Aires government to install WiFi around the city.

To listen to the interview, in Spanish, click here (you’ll need Internet Explorer)

In a surprise announcement Thursday, Argentina’s government said it will kill Fibertel, the country’s leading Internet Service Provider.

“Fibertel doesn’t exist anymore,” Planning Minister Julio De Vido said at a press conference.

Of course, Fibertel does exist. De Vido was speaking idiomatically. Indeed, I posted this article to the web via Fibertel.

But if De Vido gets his way, Fibertel won’t exist three months from now.

De Vido said Fibertel, which is owned by the government’s sworn enemy, the media giant Grupo Clarín, is using an illegal license to operate in the telecommunications and broadband industry.

Fibertel has more than a million customers. De Vido said they now have 90 days to find another Internet service.

Despite the dramatic announcement, however, it seems unlikely that Fibertel will be dismantled within 90 days.

Grupo Clarín described De Vido’s plans as “arbitrary, illegal and unprecedented.”

Clarín said the government’s claims have “no legal substance” and that it will fight them in court. Clarín also vowed to continue providing Internet access to its customers.

The courts will likely take a long time to resolve this issue. Meanwhile, Fibertel will keep operating as Argentina’s No. 1 broadband provider, ahead of the telephone companies Telecom Argentina (which offers Internet through Arnet) and Telefonica Argentina (which offers broadband through Speedy).

De Vido said Argentines have “a great quantity” of ISPs to choose from apart from Fibertel. But in reality, Arnet and Speedy are the only viable options for hundreds of thousands of customers. In some cases, customers may have no viable options, giving them no choice in the matter.

Presidential Cabinet Chief Anibal Fernandez said in his blog Thursday that Argentina has over 200 “trustworthy” Internet providers. Good luck finding them in your neighborhood.

What’s relevant to consumers is not how many ISPs there are in Argentina, but how many providers there are in any given neighborhood.

Killing Fibertel would effectively give Arnet and Speedy a duopoly on Internet access in Argentina. In some areas, either company would be the only provider available. This is ironic given that the government has repeatedly criticized Grupo Clarín for being “a monopoly.”

It was the government itself that authorized Clarín to operate this way in 2007, when it formally approved a merger between Multicanal and Cablevisión, the country’s leading cable providers.

If the government were to shut down Fibertel within 90 days, the result could be logistical chaos for consumers.

If you’ve ever spent time waiting in line at a Cablevisión branch office, or on the phone with customer service at Arnet or Speedy, imagine how hard it would be to get Internet installed if more than one million customers requested it all at once.

It’s hard to imagine how this would not be a nightmare for customers and possibly even the companies themselves. In addition, it may be technically impossible for Arnet and Speedy to provide broadband for all of Fibertel’s customers.

The decision to kill Fibertel comes just days after Grupo Clarín chief Hector Magnetto met with key members of Argentina’s opposition parties. It also comes after Magnetto met with the Argentine Business Association and the Argentine Industrial Union, which represents the country’s leading industrial manufacturers.

Magnetto is Public Enemy No. 1 for Argentine President Cristina Fernández and her husband, former president Nestor Kirchner. For a look at the battle between the Kirchners and Grupo Clarin, check out this article I wrote about Argentine politicians and their use of Twitter.

In 2007 Kirchner’s government approved the merger between Cablevisión and Multicanal. At the time, Clarín was widely accused of biased support in favor of the government. After getting approval for its merger, Clarín said it would invest $500 million through 2010 to improve service in the cable and broadband industry.

But the government’s relationship with Clarín has changed markedly in recent years.

And now, in 2010, according to Clarín, the government is going after the company for something that the government itself authorized Clarín to do years ago, which is provide Internet access through Fibertel. De Vido didn’t say what has changed since 2007.

Given Fibertel’s popularity and market penetration among the middle class, opposition parties will likely use the attack on Fibertel to pound the government before next year’s presidential election.

Opposition Congressman Francisco De Narvaez has already highlighted the issue.

“We absolutely reject this policy from (Minister) De Vido (versus) Fibertel,” De Narvaez said in a tweet. “It’s another abuse of power by (the Kirchners) and, as always, people are the hostages.”

Even those customers who have long hated Fibertel may change their mind now that the government has told them that they have even fewer options in choosing a broadband provider.

As Mark Twain wrote of his character, Tom Sawyer, “He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it — namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. ”

It’s easy to imagine that instead of being angry at Fibertel, customers may now start to covet the service and turn their anger toward the government, whose decision could leave them with even worse service, or no service at all. For others, the cost of Internet access may rise.

As the economist Lucas Llach noted in his fine blog, La Ciencia Maldita, it’s hard to know what will end up happening with Fibertel.

But it’s equally as hard to see how killing the country’s top Internet provider, and leaving customers with fewer Internet options, is good politics.

An astonishing 40% of all pregnancies in Argentina end in abortion.

That, at least, is the conclusion of a report published this week by Human Rights Watch.

If it’s accurate, it puts Argentina’s abortion rate at about double the global average of around 20%, according to UN data.

It also almost doubles the 22% rate in the U.S., where about half of all pregnancies are unintended (this figure differs sharply depending on ethnicity).

According to this 2003 study of global abortion rates by The Lancet, Europe has the world’s highest abortion rate.

The Lancet study had this to say:

“There were an estimated 205 million pregnancies (livebirths, spontaneous miscarriages, stillbirths, and induced abortions) worldwide in 2003, of which about 20% ended in induced abortion. In eastern Europe, almost half of all pregnancies ended in induced abortion, whereas in northern America, one in five pregnancies ended in abortion. Even in regions where small proportions of pregnancies end in induced abortion, such as middle and western Africa, about one in ten pregnancies were terminated.”

This week’s Human Rights Watch study, which follows up on a similar one done in 2005, finds that reproductive health options, including access to healthcare and contraceptives, is lacking for many Argentine women and girls.

According to the study: “Until 1985 the sale and use of contraception was entirely prohibited in the country, and politicians and even medical service providers still justify actions that curtail women’s human rights by referring to a century-old maxim, ‘to populate is to govern.’”

Abortion is illegal in Argentina except in the case of rape. About 20% of maternal deaths in Argentina stem from problems related to illegally performed abortions, according to the report.

To see the study, click here.

A new opinion poll released this week indicates that a majority of Argentines disapprove of the way both President Cristina Fernandez and opposition parties are doing their jobs.

The survey, conducted on 2,011 people by the polling firm Management & Fit, was carried out from July 30 through August 2 and has a margin of error of four percentage points.

The question put to people was, “Independently of who you voted for in the last presidential election, do you approve or disapprove of the way Cristina Fernández is managing the government?”

Similarly, Management & fit asked people, “Independently of who you voted for in the last presidential election, do you approve or disapprove of the way the opposition is doing its job?”

The next election is in October, 2011, when both Congress and the Presidency will be up for grabs.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Aníbal Fernández is nothing if not controversial.

The mustachioed presidential cabinet chief is President Cristina Fernandez’s chief attack dog, chief PR agent, chief public defender and chief political prosecutor.

More than anyone else, he represents and defends the president’s policies in public and to the media. He is the public face of a president who distrusts the media and virtually never gives interviews.

Fernández, who is not related to the president, is therefore the guardian the presidential gate. He opens the doors, and closes them, and takes on all comers, big and small, with merciless intensity.

A near exact lookalike of the star of the famous Mario Brothers video game, Fernández is famous – or infamous, depending on your partisan predilection – for his quick wit and wicked fast tongue.

He loves debate and is often very good at it. He’s also funny – Argentine street funny, not Robin Williams or Stephen Colbert funny – and he has the unique ability to come off as a complete jerk yet also as a likable fellow.

He comes off as a jerk because he rarely misses an opportunity to insult those who question the government, its policies or its protagonists. But he can sometimes come off as likable because he slams his opponents with a hint of humor that seems beyond the reach of most political pugilists.

Fernández gave an unusually interesting interview to the TV station Telefe this week. The first clip is posted above, the second below.

In the interview, Fernández said he doesn’t care about being a nice guy. “It’s not that I like irritating people,” he said. “Let’s say that I don’t dislike it.”

Unfortunately, both clips are in Spanish. But if your Spanish is up to par, the interview is worth watching for its sheer entertainment value. But it also allows you to see how seriously – or not – the government takes itself, or at least how it tries to portray itself to the local culture.

The interview is exceptionally laid back. Just look at the clothing worn by the journalist from Telefe. He’s dressed as if he were about to go out for beers with his buddies, not as if he were interviewing the presidential cabinet chief in his office. Moreover, the interview is mainly personal and delves little into public policy.

Instead of talking about the future, say, of social security or how China’s aging population may change its demand for Argentine soybeans over the next decade, the interview addresses subjects such as Fernández’s sex life and the likelihood that he might have sex in his office.

Among other things, Fernández says he:

*Starts his day at 5am with a workout, then works until 11pm. In one video clip, taken from an older interview, he said he starts work at 6:45am while his critics, like Congressman Felipe Solá, haven’t “even gotten up to piss by that hour.”

*Has given up his personal life to work in politics, but hasn’t given up on sex.

*Believes in God and Christ but doesn’t believe in priests, bishops or the Pope. The God he believes in would support gay marriage.

*Thinks Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri is “lazy and knows nothing about politics.”

*Thinks 98% of Argentine businessmen lie on their tax returns.

*Thinks that “in Argentina lying is something that is more or less common.”

*Would marry Commerce Secretary Guillermo Moreno before ever sitting down to negotiate with the director and owner of the newspaper Clarín.

Enjoy!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Argentine President Cristina Fernández Wednesday signed into law the gay marriage bill, making Argentina the first country in Latin America to allow for same-sex marriage.

But even as advocates rejoiced over the measure, a plurality of Argentines believes Congress made a mistake by passing it.

Around 44.6% of Argentines polled said they disagree with what Congress did while 41.8% said they favor the law.

It’s important to note that the survey, carried out by the polling firm Management & Fit from July 15 through July 16, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7%. That is greater than the difference in the poll results, which should make people cautious when drawing conclusions.

Some 13.6% of 1,220 polled said they don’t know what to think about it.

About 57% of people surveyed said the government should have held a national public referendum on the issue before passing the law.

One hundred percent of people polled said the law is “really gay.”*

*For non-native English-speaking readers, this part is just a joke.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After around 14 hours of heating debate, Argentina’s Senate early Thursday passed legislation that is unprecedented throughout all of Latin America:

It gives gays and lesbians the same marriage rights traditionally given to straight couples.

The final vote for the bill, which was already passed by the Lower House and will now become law, was 33 to 27, with three abstentions. You can read the story we did for The Wall Street Journal by clicking here. (Subscription may be required.)

The law gives gay married couples adoption rights equivalent to those held by straight couples. This had been the main point of contention for opponents, many of whom had protested outside Congress earlier this week.

The bill is bound to enhance Argentina’s already-glowing reputation as a country open to gay tourism.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Buenos Aires City judge ruled Tuesday that the city’s new police department cannot use tasers because doing so would violate a United Nations treaty on torture.

City officials vowed to appeal the ruling, which they believe defies common sense and is at least partly an effort to discredit Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri’s bid to build the city’s own police force.

Judge Andrea Danas issued the ruling after the Human Rights Observatory filed a suit against the use of tasers, claiming that they violate a person’s basic human rights by causing physical harm.

City officials have dismissed such claims, saying the “very point of using tasers is to protect innocent people while causing the least amount of harm to perpetrators.”

The city’s new police force acquired a handful of tasers to test them out on a trial basis in hopes of eventually using them to deter criminal activity without resorting to more violent means.

Tasers are used by law enforcement officials in many countries to subdue suspects. See this Wikipedia article for more background and details.

The former school teacher, turned government official-turned street thug, Luis D’Elía, acknowledged in a radio interview Tuesday that he had called former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner a “son of a bitch.”

“Yes, I did say that,” said D’Elía, the soft-spoken street protester who sometimes represents the government on overseas diplomatic missions.

D’Elía, who has gained notoriety, among other things, for breaking into police stations, punching peaceful protesters whose views differ from his own, and saying he hates white people, said that while Kirchner may be a son of a bitch, he’s Argentina’s own son of a bitch.

In fairness to D’Elía, he appears to have used the expression as a term of endearment, tantamount, roughly, to saying that Kirchner is “a tough guy, a man of convictions” who stands up for what he believes is right and is willing to do battle with whomever or whatever stands in his way.

Kirchner, in this view, is wiling to fight hard to do what is right, even if this means being a “son of a bitch” to those special interests who seek to spoil the common good.

Question: At what point does “being a son of a bitch” become a good thing?

If you stand up for what is right, does that really make you a son of a bitch?

*Photo: Luis D’Elía, in the middle, attacking peaceful protesters at the Plaza de Mayo in 2008. Moments before this, he had been a special guest at the Casa Rosada.

A good deal will be written in the coming days about Argentina’s crushing World Cup defeat and its political significance for Argentine President Cristina Fernández and her husband, former president Néstor Kirchner.

Both are considered serious contenders for the next presidential election in late 2011.

Before Saturday’s shock defeat in South Africa, local media had published a veritable avalanche of articles about the World Cup and its influence on politics.

Foreign media outlets stepped in as well, with fun yet substantive articles like this one by friends at Bloomberg.

But just as the World Cup itself has been, Argentina’s political future is unpredictable.

Still, one things seems to be clear: the Kirchners are in trouble.

Despite years of exceptionally impressive economic growth and political stability, the First Couple remains highly unpopular.

Years of fierce political confrontation and aggressive, hostile rhetoric have left huge portions of the electorate with a bitter taste in their mouth.

Political infighting like that taking place in the U.S. now between Republicans and Democrats is typically, though not always, the mainstay of bad times – recessions, depressions, crises, etc. – when politicians play the blame game, not during the kind of boom times Argentina has had since its  2001-2002 meltdown.

Argentina’s troubles since then have been largely self-inflicted, many say, citing the 2008 farm conflict and the 2010 Central Bank crisis as perfect examples of avoidable crises. Many people  think the country is doing well despite the Kirchners, not because of them.

Indeed, that is essentially what distinguishes Kirchner supporters from their detractors. Kirchneristas believe Argentina is doing well because of the Kirchners. Critics think it is doing well despite them.

Whatever the case, some policy choices, like the decision to take over the management of energy companies and nationalize the country’s private pension system have spooked investors here and abroad.

Finally, despite the virtually unanimous sensation that inflation is real and is pinching people’s purchasing power, the Kirchners continue to deny that it exists, compromising their credibility.

Since the government’s conflict with farmers in mid 2008, surveys have consistently shown the Kirchners to be broadly unpopular. That lack of support led to a bitter setback for the First Couple in last year’s congressional election in the province of Buenos Aires, where Kirchner won second place on the ballot.

Despite having the entirety of the state media apparatus, the ruling party’s political machinery, and his own track record as president behind him, Kirchner was unable to get even a third of the vote in the province, which had previously been considered a strong-hold for him and his wife.

Cristina Fernández won the 2007 presidential election with just 45% of the vote. By mid 2009, with her approval rating around the low to mid 20s, her husband got just 31% in his race to represent Buenos Aires.

It’s hard to know how many votes either Kirchner would get if the election were held now.

Given their consistently low approval ratings, one of the few reasons that anyone even questions whether they could win again in 2011 is that plausible alternatives to the First Couple often seem so feeble and disorganized. A coherent, nationally-backed alternative candidate does not yet exist.

Another reason is that since the Kirchners represent the party in power, they have the state’s vast resources at their disposal to push policies that can win votes.

Meanwhile, the Kirchners are incredibly agile, famous for outgunning their opponents and out-attacking them at virtually every point of contact.

Even so, a review of Saturday’s World Cup defeat in South Africa might provide some insight into how a more strategic, defensive approach might serve them well.

As Jeré Longman of the NY Times wrote:

“In building an ostentatious attack, Maradona neglected to shore up his defense for a day like Saturday, when the goals stopped coming for Argentina and the threats at the other end had to be countered with something other than indifference, lack of speed and disorganization.”

Perhaps the biggest threat to the Kirchners is that many people, including many who initially supported the government, seem to have become indifferent to the government’s accomplishments, including the booming economy and the relative political stability following the complete chaos of 2001-2002. Moreover, many of those people’s gains have been wiped out by inflation, which has in many cases reduced purchasing power.

For many people, the “goals have stopped coming in” and they are asking what the country should do next.

When chaos is a reality, as it was in 2001-2002, stability seems like a sufficient goal. Anything beyond that is a luxury, an option that people can afford to set aside until basic needs – like public order – are met.

Last year, sensing that the electorate’s simple desire for social and political order had evolved into a more nuanced desire for broader accomplishment, the Kirchners tried to shift thoughts back to the dark days of the 2001-2002 economic and political collapse.

The mid-term election, the Kirchners’ said, presented voters with a choice between order and chaos.

But the effort to present the options in such manic terms failed. Nationwide, about seven out of 10 votes went for opposition candidates. The Kirchners’ lost their control over Congress. Chaos never ensued.

Indeed, despite warnings to the contrary, Argentina’s economy is humming along smoothly, growing quickly this year as it rebounds from what most economists say was a sharp recession last year.

Moreover, while opposition parties gained power and are now asserting authority in Congress, virtually nobody foresees any major crises on the horizon. Instead, opposition leaders are eager to prevent a crisis. Despite incendiary rhetoric from a government which often has accused its opponents of wanting to overthrow it, virtually nobody in Congress wants the president to resign before her term ends.

That might not be so true for Maradona, who coached the incredibly talented Argentine squad into Saturday’s defeat against Germany. After all, as this very interesting post by a friend in The New Republic notes, Argentina can be a fickle nation, moving from one extreme to the other without blinking. Just look at how the country supported Menem throughout the 1990s but now disparages his administration to no end. Menem was a saint, now he is the devil.

But titans like Maradona, and even Kirchner, can rise and fall, and rise again. My own sense is that Maradona will likely be harder on himself than his countrymen will be on him. He seemed to show and feel genuine humility after Saturday’s defeat. It’s hard not to empathize with that.

Maradona and his team gave it their best shot, and gave us some wonderfully thrilling moments as they took us along for the ride.

Fair or not, humility is a word few analysts would use to describe the Kirchners, and it may be hard for the Kichners to make a comeback because of this. Policy aside, few people seem to sympathize with their governing style. They are perceived to be arrogant and, much like Menem in the 1990s, incapable of self criticism or humble retreat.

Like the country itself, Maradona has long been a fascinating barometer of human nature, impressive potential and sometimes shocking disappointment.

Just as it would be overreach to predict Maradona’s future, it seems foolhardy to draw hardened conclusions about what the World Cup results mean for the Kirchners.

As the NY Times put it when describing this week’s top World Cup matches:

“Most surprising was not that Brazil and Argentina lost, but that while fearsome in reputation, they proved merely fragile on the field, delicate, brittle and cracking under the first sign of strain. Afterward, Maradona, 49, hinted that he would step down.”

Nobody expects either of the Kirchners to “crack under strain” or step down.

After all, both have proven themselves to be incredibly resilient and fiercely determined even in the midst of controversy and challenge. And though they too are “fearsome in reputation,” it’s unclear how fragile they may be on the electoral field next year.

Even so, some things seem certain. If satisfaction over cultural achievements such as winning an Oscar for Best Foreign Film or winning the World Cup translate into votes, then the World Cup beating was a clear setback for the Kirchners.

People are no longer wondering if the president will travel to South Africa to watch Argentina play for the world title. That photo opportunity will never materialize, at least not for this president, at least not before this election.

Moreover, the government’s plan to give away more than 1 million HDTV decoders to poor Argentines suddenly seems less of a winsome idea than it did just days ago.

All the hopes and the expectations for a glorious national triumph are gone, and as they fade away so will the attention that has distracted people’s focus on the government and life’s quotidian problems like crime and inflation.

The biggest criticism the national squad may receive in the days ahead may be that it never really practiced as a full team the way some other country’s teams do. It was a massively talented team, but a team is always supposed to be more than the sum of its parts.

The Kirchners’ greatest strength, it seems, is that while their “team” is relatively tiny – a handful of key officials and foot soldiers in Congress – they have almost always played together as a team.

When the opposition is divided, the Kirchners have been fiercely united. Loyalty to team and mission is a fundamental aspect of the Kirchners’ DNA. This has allowed them to forge ahead despite opposition, creating wedges in a factious Congress and getting support for their goals even when it seems unlikely.

The powerful, impenetrable and utterly united German team had no trouble preventing Argentina from scoring on the field Saturday.

Argentina’s opposition parties and politicians, who are far more divided on the field than were the Germans, may find it harder to unite and provide a similarly strong front in next year’s election.

And as long as that’s the case, even the most powerful individual strikers, leaders like Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri, will have trouble getting anywhere without a full national team backing them.

Yet the Kirchners’ great strength – their ability to hold their own team together – could, ironically, also be a disadvantage to them next year. That’s because many Argentines seem to feel that the Kirchners are not actually team players. They don’t play for the country, they play for themselves.

Politics, for the Kirchners, is not a team sport.

The Kirchners have never been known as consensus builders. Instead, the dominant view is that the Kirchners simply impose their policies on the country through brute force, coercion or arm twisting. This may simply be the way politics is done here.

But in a country that seems eager to overcome its divisive past, this style of politics may not be a winning ticket in the future.

If the World Cup showed us anything at all, it is that it is possible for Argentines to come together as a nation, to unite as a people and joyfully embrace the ties that bind them.

Next year, the candidate who best represents this sense of shared destiny, and who best unites diverging views and interests into a cohesive movement, is the person who will win the election.

The Oscar-winning American film director Oliver Stone met Thursday with Argentine President Cristina Fernández.

Stone has been in town promoting his new film, South of the Border, in which he reportedly focuses on how leaders like Fernández, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, have “revolutionized” Latin America.

Stone interviews seven regional presidents and looks at how they compare their work with the way they are typically portrayed in the media.

In the photo here Stone is shown with Fernández, her translator, and Tristan Bauer, who runs the state news channel, Canal 7.

You can see a trailer of the film here below:

Click here to view the embedded video.