Sunday Headline News in Argentina: November 4th, 2007 - One Week with Madame President

Madame President has been elected for exactly a week today, and already she has shown how intelligent and wily she can be: she held several interviews with a wide array of reporters - almost all one-on-ones - and even with reporters she very recently criticized for being "opinionated" and reporting with a bias (La Nación Joaquin Morales Solá). She held her ground with most of them, although once or twice she showed her claws: when being asked why she dressed up, she answered "Do you want me to dress as if I were poor?" (btw, her husbands wealth declaration says he has approx. U$S 2 million in the bank plus 28 pieces of real estate ... not bad for a president), and when Marcelo Bonelli asked her about her relationship with the press she "told him off" like a first grade teacher to her student. We have four very interesting years ahead of us.

As for the papers today, they shared the main news as political: La Nación highlighted some newly-elected faces from the Province of Buenos Aires, and Clarín showcased a potential conflict between Carrió and Macri over the leadership of the opposition to the newly-elected President.

The truth is that, although both share the strong opposition to the leading party, their approaches and ideas today are quite
different and show significant gaps - which some consider unsurmountable. Be as it may, Macri will be leading the destinies of the district where Carrió won in last Sunday's presidential election, so the people who elected Macri must see something in Carrió and vice versa. This should help bridge some of the gaps in the not too distant future.

As for the other news, both papers showed Boca Juniors' victory over Racing Club on saturday, and while La Nación mentioned also the growing consumption of drugs and an incipient corruption scandal involving the Secretary of Transport; while Clarín settles for the Boca Juniors' victory and with an optimisting comment from Spain's Zapatero saying how Argentina is reaching the end of its nightmare ... for this week, enough said!