Look carefully at the mural hanging just behind Interior Minister Débora Giorgi.

Last June I discussed the possibility that President Cristina Kirchner would try to reform the constitution so she could run for a third consecutive term.

Last week the president appeared to float a trial balloon to see how people would react to such a move.

The constitution currently allows only for two consecutive terms and hers expires in 2015.

On Friday virtually all of Argentina’s major newspapers reported that Vice President Amado Boudou had said it was important to debate the idea now, and not in three years time.

I wrote something like this for Dow Jones Newswires:

In radio interviews Friday, Boudou downplayed the controversial reports. But he didn’t deny all of them and he carefully worded his answers to leave the options open.

“It’s not time to talk about those things,” Boudou said in an interview with Radio 10. “I can’t say today what’s going to happen the day after tomorrow. We all experience unexpected and unpredictable things that aren’t in your schedule now but that might be in your schedule another day.”

Boudou admitted to being at a political event in a coastal city Thursday where constitutional reform was discussed. He said he was there as a “political militant” and that things discussed in such meetings should remain private.

“A lot of things were discussed,” he said.

It could be that Kirchner simply wants to keep the talk alive to avoid becoming a lame duck early in her term.

As the estimable journalist Roberto Guareschi noted via Twitter, “In a difficult year, the re-reelection will keep PJ barons cautious. And Malvinas talk might serve as a distraction.”It’s unclear if Kirchner really wants to run for a third term. But it seems abundantly clear that she’s content to have people talking about the idea.

Last year Kirchner scoffed at the notion that she would try to reform the constitution, saying that if she couldn’t get Congress to pass her 2011 budget how could she get it to amend the the constitution.

But she didn’t put the issue to rest with this comment. After all, she didn’t say reforming the constitution was a bad idea. Nor did she said she’d never do such a thing. She simply said she didn’t have the power to reform the constitution. At the time, at least, she didn’t.

But after winning October’s election with 54% of the vote, and seeing her party earn solid majorities in both chambers of Congress, that may no longer be the case.

Kirchner is incomparably more powerful now than she was last year.

That’s disconcerting to opposition politicians and Kirchner’s critics, many of whom fear the president wants to make Argentina more like its ally Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez has a nearly unparalleled grip on power.

But to Kirchner’s supporters, it could be the perfect way to ensure that the political and economic “model” now in place endures for many years to come.

Vice President Amado Boudou appears to be a big Apple fan.

In this photo you can see him meeting with Economy Minister Hernan Lorenzino.

But if you’re an Apple geek what you’ll notice about the picture is that Boudou’s desk is full of Apple products. He’s got 1) a big iMac 2) a wireless Apple keyboard 3) a wireless Apple touch mouse and 4) and iPhone 4 or 4S (bottom of the photo, implying it may belong to Lorenzino).

Boudou is also using a LaCie portable hard drive, which is made specifically for Apple computers.

These products are expensive and can be hard to find in Argentina. Indeed, the government banned iPhone imports a long time ago, forcing Argentines to get them from MercadoLibre or somewhere else.

The import restrictions have also made it hard for local Apple resellers to honor the company’s international AppleCare warranty. Dealers here can’t import the parts needed to fix Apple products. This has been very frustrating for some Apple owners, including many readers of this blog.

Another iPhone fan appears to be Industry Minister Débora Giorgi, who has advocated the import restrictions, saying they help create local jobs. In the photo below, she is seen with four phones, one of which is an iPhone.

Former cabinet chief Aníbal Fernández, now a member of Congress, is also a big fan. He proudly used to take his iPad with him to testify before Congress.

Like many of Argentina’s policies, the iPhone ban is informal. It was never announced publicly and exists solely in de facto terms.

Telecommunications companies would love to sell the iPhone here.

But they haven’t been able to bring it into the country. Industry officials say the government hopes that by banning products, manufacturers will eventually make them here.

That appears to have been the case with Research in Motion, which decided to assemble Blackberries locally after the government banned their entry.

But it’s hard to imagine Apple deciding to make iPhones in Argentina. The NY Times had a great story about iPhone manufacturing here, and a great video here.

The iPhone ban is part of a much broader government crack-down on imports.

You can read more about all of this in a piece I did for The Wall Street Journal here.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is footage of British Prime Minister David Cameron discussing the controversial dispute with Argentina over the sovereignty of the Falklands Islands.

Last week Cameron made the following remarks, which set off a firestorm in Argentina:

“”What the Argentinians have been saying recently, I would argue, is actually far more like colonialism because these people (who live on the islands) want to remain British and the Argentinians want them to do something else.”

Argentines reacted furiously, saying that no British prime minister has the “moral authority” to make such a statement given England’s own colonial history.

What do you think? Which position is correct? Which is more democratic? Does it matter?

Here’s a summary of the dispute by Al Jazeera.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Argentina’s growing drug problem represents a major threat to the kind of peaceful political and social stability the country has enjoyed, with infamous exceptions, in recent decades.

Experts say crushing the threat early is crucial to overcoming it before related violence and corruption infect public officials and police forces as they have in other countries. Once the problem has corrupted a country’s judicial system, it is exponentially harder to eradicate.

Click here to view the embedded video.

My colleague Matt Moffett wrote a feature for The Wall Street Journal on this and the rather strange events that have been taking place in Argentina in recents weeks. You can read it here.

OK, maybe not.

Still, Argentina’s biggest oil and gas company, YPF, has found a massive amount of oil in the province of Neuquen.

YPF on Monday confirmed the existence of almost 1 billion barrels worth of oil equivalent in the province. That’s not enough to turn Argentina into Saudi Arabia or even Montana and North Dakota, which have become the new stars in the world’s race to produce more oil.

Saudi Arabia reportedly has hundreds of billions of barrels in oil reserves.

But if the discovery is proven, it is enough to roughly double Argentina’s oil reserves and potentially help turn around the country’s position as an increasingly voracious energy importer.

Argentina’s oil reserves have fallen by about 16% over the past decade amid rising demand and relatively scarce investment in exploration and production, according to the Argentine Energy Institute.

YPF’s discovery, which I wrote about here, could soon help change that trend. Moreover, YPF said it has also outlined another area in Neuqen, where even more oil might be found.

The find comes amid a global boom in unconventional oil and gas exploration and production.

In the U.S., the boom has radically transformed the country’s energy outlook, taking what many said was a doomed domestic industry and possibly putting the U.S. on path to becoming energy indepdendent.

Argentina is ranked third behind China and the U.S. in its potential to produce unconventional gas – gas that’s extracted from incredibly old shale formations – according to a report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Link: My article on MarketWatch
And my colleagues at WSJ have another piece here.

Almost nine months after Argentina confiscated a U.S. military plane, causing an unprecedented diplomatic mess, Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and U.S. President Barack Obama met in Cannes, the famous city in the French Riviera.

(If you’re not familiar with the airplane scandal, click here to see an article I wrote for the WSJ. It was the paper’s most-read article worldwide for about three consecutive days.)

Obama called Kirchner “a great friend, not only of mine but of the United States.” The comment surprised many in Argentina and the U.S. who were so perplexed by the plane scandal.

The brief meeting took place on the sidelines of a G-20 summit.

Here’s a video – in both English and Spanish – of the two presidents speaking to the press.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Bad news for all the hookers and pimps out there.

President Cristina Kirchner signed a decree banning the publication of sex ads in local newspapers.

Kirchner said the decree will help end discrimination against women who are “humiliated” through sexual exploitation and objectification.

Prostitution is legal in Argentina and Kirchner indicated she wouldn’t do anything to change this, saying she won’t penalize women for exercising the world’s oldest profession. Click here for a post I did back in 2007 about the legality of prostitution in Buenos Aires.

“Let it be clear: We’re never going to condemn any woman because most of the time they don’t choose the life that they’re living,” she said in a speech Tuesday.

But Kirchner indicated the decree offers another added benefit, at least from her point of view. Newspapers, she said, make a lot of profit by selling sex ads to prostitutes.

By banning the ads, Kirchner has taken away another source of income from the ever-despised coup-mongering, opposition media like Grupo Clarin.

Of course, banning the publication of sex ads may do little to prevent the kinky skin-friction business from thriving. Countless local websites offer Amazon.com-like opportunities (warning: this is a graphic, XXX link) for prostitutes to reach their clientele.

Some local whorehouses even use Google Maps to woo Johns into their pleasure palaces.

The ban on newspaper ads seems so old-school when today’s pleasure pushers are so Web 2.0.

President Cristina Kirchner gave Economy Minister Amado Boudou the surprise of his life on Saturday, choosing him to be her vice presidential candidate in October’s election.

The 47-year-old Boudou appeared exceptionally pleased with the announcement, which took almost all 1,000 people in attendance by surprise.

Boudou’s nice-guy face filled with emotion as he heard Kirchner say he would be the No. 2 person on her ticket.

Boudou is arguably the most affable official in the Kirchner administration. A self-described rocker, he enjoys playing the guitar and singing. He likes to party and is a fan of Argentina’s nightlife.

On one occasion, while making an important announcement about Argentina’s sovereign debt problem, he invited a local rock star to accompany him in the press room.

Boudou is perhaps most famous, or infamous if you’re a critic, for denying that Argentina has an inflation problem. At one point he said not only that inflation didn’t exist in Argentina but that it could not exist given the country’s macroeconomic conditions.

The minister in fact knows this not to be the case, which has led critics to say he’s a Kirchner “soldier” whose loyalty is uncompromising.

Though dismissed by some as an intellectual lightweight with little technical knowledge of economic theory, Boudou’s influence on Argentina has been substantial.

It was Boudou who first proposed to Kirchner that she should nationalize Argentina’s 14-year-old private pension fund system.

It was a radical idea, but one that Cristina and former president Nestor Kirchner grew to appreciate enormously.

In naming Boudou as her VP on Saturday, Cristina praised him for bringing the idea to her. The decision to nationalize the pension fund system was the most important she has made as president, she said.

Argentina’s election is October 23. You can watch Cristina’s speech here.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said Tuesday she’ll seek reelection in October’s presidential election.

The announcement makes it likely that by the next presidential election in 2015, Argentina will have been governed nonstop for twelve years by one or another Kirchner.

Cristina’s husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, took office in May 2003. Many had initially expected him, not Fernández, to run in 2011. That would have allowed the dynamic duo to remain in power perpetually by rotating through the presidency.

But an unexpected heart attack killed those plans, and Kirchner himself, last October.

I met him only once. But by most accounts, Kirchner was the ideas-man behind both his first term and Cristina’s. It’s unclear how her second term might differ from her first if she’s elected.

Whatever the case, some things are likely to change given a series of economic challenges that didn’t exist when Cristina took power in December 2007. She faces a major test in handling inflation that virtually all economists say surpasses 20% annually. She also faces a currency whose value in real terms is appreciating at the rate of around 15% annually, making Argentine companies and their products less competitive abroad.

How will she deal with such issues? True to her style, she hasn’t said.

Alberto Fernández, who is unrelated to the president and was her first cabinet chief, said Tuesday he expects the next four years to be “difficult.”

Time will tell. Critics have been discounting the Kirchners from day one.

Just about every political junkie in Argentina is wondering if President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will seek reelection in October. Not only has the president not revealed her plans but she’s said she’s “not dying” to be president again.

That’s fueled speculation she will drop a political bomb later this month by announcing she won’t seek another four-year term.

But most analysts assume she’ll confirm her candidacy within two weeks, as required by law. To them, it’s inconceivable that a politician so likely to win reelection would turn down the chance to remain in power. For these people, the more interesting question is who she’ll pick to accompany her as vice president.

The truth is few people know with certainty what the president’s intentions are. Even people relatively close to the president say they’re unsure if she’ll run. In some ways, arm-chair psychologists may have a better chance of predicting the president’s plans than experienced political analysts.

After all, how is a political analyst to interpret the president when she says, tears streaming down her face, that she’s already given all she has to the country. Is it raw emotion, calculated political acting, some combination of the two, or something entirely different? This seems to be less the stuff of politics than of psychology.

But assuming she does run, one of the most interesting questions relates to how Argentina might change under a second Fernandez term. For some, the biggest change would entail a complete overhaul of Argentina’s constitutional system.

It’s well-known that Fernandez has spoken with confidants about possible constitutional reforms. What’s less certain is precisely what the president might have in mind.

In February Congresswoman Diana Conti, a key presidential ally in Congress, said publicly what other supporters had long been saying in private. Which is to say that Argentina needs “constitutional reform” so an “eternal Cristina” can stay in power as long as necessary.

Conti said she and other “ultra K” supporters advocated such reform. She didn’t provide details and she acknowledged that this would be no small endeavor. It would require consensus among Argentines.

But another prominent political figure, Supreme Court Justice Eugenio Zaffaroni, who has been mentioned as a possible VP candidate for Fernandez, also favors reforming the constitution.

Zaffaroni would like to see Argentina’s congressional government turned into a parliamentary system in hopes of giving the country greater political stability and reducing its dependence on presidential power.

It’s far from clear that adopting a parliamentary democracy would impose stability on Argentina. After all, Argentines are largely Italian, in more ways than one, and Italy’s parliamentary system is famous for its rotating prime minsters and unstable, ineffective parliament.

So how would Fernandez sell constitutional reform to skeptical Argentines? By offering a bit of something to everyone.

For instance, the City of Buenos Aires has long yearned for greater autonomy. Mayor Mauricio Macri’s effort to build a police force, with no help – indeed, with opposition – from the federal government, is a perfect example.

The federal government controls the city’s streets through the Federal Police. Moreover, Fernandez’s personal distaste for Macri has prevented the city and federal governments from collaborating on this and other issues.

What does any of this have to do with parliamentary reform? Simple, Fernandez could offer autonomy to the city, reforming the constitution to give it state-like status and near-total control of the police and other resources. In exchange, Macri, or any other mayor, would have a strong incentive to back reform.

The only politician who has successfully challenged Fernandez and her late husband, former president Nestor Kirchner, is Congressman Francisco de Narvaez, AKA “El Colorado” because of his red hair.

In 2009 De Narvaez outpolled Kirchner in a congressional race in the province of Buenos Aires, infuriating the former president and proving he could wield significant political influence.

El Colorado, who is now running for governor in the province, would prefer to run for president. But he’s got a problem. He was born in Colombia. He’s constitutionally ineligible to run for president.

Reforming the constitution could change that, giving De Narvaez an incentive to support the reform.

It’s not hard to imagine how the ample use of political carrots and sticks could boost support for some kind of constitutional reform within a year or two after the October election.

Fernandez and her supporters could win by gaining the capacity to remain in power indefinitely, no longer impeded by constitutional term limits.

All of this is speculation, of course. The president has dismissed such talk as nonsense and it’s not even clear she wants to be in power indefinitely, if at all.

In February, Fernandez said it was ridiculous to think she could reform the constitution if she couldn’t even get Congress to approve her 2011 budget.

That may be true.

But it’s also true that Fernandez is skilled at jaw-dropping her critics by announcing unexpected policies from one day to the next. She keeps her cards close to her chest and reveals nothing until the last minute. It’s her modus operandi. As such, her “indecision” about a second term shouldn’t surprise anyone.

The president has consistently outmaneuvered opponents by being several steps ahead of them – and by often doing things that nobody would expect. This has often kept the competition off balance.

When Fernandez ran for office in 2007 her campaign slogan was, “The Change is Just Beginning.”

In fact, after she won the election, nothing changed at all. Fernandez’s administration looked exactly liked her husband’s. She even kept the same cabinet ministers.

Just as in 2007, Fernandez hasn’t said what she would do if reelected. Then, as now, even the most-connected political insiders had little idea what Fernandez would do in the years ahead. Now it’s not even clear what she’ll do in the next two weeks.

But that’s not preventing some of Argentina’s smartest analysts from thinking a second Fernandez term could be more radical than the first. After all, that’s exactly what her own administration officials have said will happen if she’s reelected.

Assuming, of course, that she runs.