Article of the Buenos Aires Herald on the seminar in the british arts centre organized by CIIMA and Foro Republicano.
By Michael Soltys
A seminar in the British Arts Centre last week sought to broaden the debate on institutional quality beyond criticism of thus currently abusing power -an “adolescent country” lacking civic maturity, said Aldo Abram, understood democracy as voting in a paternalistic régime every four years and then leaving it up to them but it should also be up to us.
Entitled “Institutional Quality = Innovation and Progress,” the seminar was organized by CIIMA (Centre for Argentine Institutional and Market Research), ESEADE business administration university, the Atlas 1853 and Foro Republicano think tanks and the German Free Democratic Party’s Friedrich Naumann Stiftung.
CIIMA’s Abram took issue with Carlos Escudé’s contention that populism was the only democratic alternative for poor countries, saying that it only led to more poverty and decadence. Nothing grows on trees, he insisted.
Political scientist Mario Serrafero spoke of a country which had never overcome its political and social problems even in periods of economic growth, reading out the comments of foreign observers 100 years pointing out the poverty of civic reactions. Describing Argentine political practice as more democratic than republican, he deplored the fact that Argentina has only had one failed coalition government since 1983 but pointed to recent Congress action against emergency decrees, the “superpowers” and the Council of Magistrates as grounds for optimism against a presidential couple whose alternation in power would be illegal in most other countries.
Writer Sergio Sinay thought that the tragedy of Argentines lay in being collective beings without realizing it. He described the recent World Cup as a metaphor for Argentina’s failure, trusting in natural resources (talented forwards), an Argentine deity and a few tricks in lieu of a plan. He also deplored the way education was increasingly less synonymous with school.
The question session touched on how to involve youth, the role of municipal government, electoral reform, the importance of political parties and the impossibility of better candidates emerging without a social demand for them.
In the first panel (which the Herald was unable to cover), CIIMA economist Martín Krause, Shell President Juan José Aranguren (who has crossed swords more than once with a Kirchner presidency) and Daniel Dessein from ADEPA press association discussed institutional problems more from the business end.
In the introductory speeches, Carlos Newland, the Rector of ESEADE, set the tone for the seminar by explaining its aim of making intellectual and business elites also feel responsible for improving institutional quality in this bicentennial period of 2010-16.
Bettina Solinger, representing the Stiftung Friedrich Naumann für die Freiheit (active in this country since 1983), said that the secret of institutional success was not so much having many rules as rules based on social consensus which applied to everybody.
Alan Arntsen, the event’s host as president of the British Arts Centre/AACI, concentrated his introductory remarks on the personality of José Ignacio García Hamilton, the first anniversary of whose death was the occasion for this seminar.
