Once again scandal comes our way from Santa Cruz yet not this time from the Patagonian fiefdom of the Kirchner dynasty but from the Santa Cruz de la Sierra capital of the oil-rich Bolivian lowlands, representing an opposite in both geographical and ideological terms – the charges against Fernando Cerimedo, long a libertarian political influencer here and now an advisor to the Bolivian presidency, of masterminding the shooting of activist Nadia Beller claiming to be pregnant by him.
What can be established beyond any doubt is that a scandal has erupted with an intense flurry of media coverage yet this newspaper hesitates before joining any rush to judgement immediately. Cerimedo’s legal status was being accused of attempted femicide by the Bolivian prosecutor without being formally indicted at time of writing – the evidence that he was behind the shooting has yet to emerge and nor is it entirely clear whether it was an assassination attempt in the first place with improbably incompetent hitmen firing at pointblank range and yet leaving the victim capable of launching voluble accusations from hospital.
But such doubts do not acquit Cerimedo any more than the current evidence suffices to convict him – unless further investigation can prove that the incident was staged, any such insinuation about this vile attack on a pregnant woman would be abominable. Yet while fools rush in where angels fear to tread, the case cannot be left at that – not only should the attack itself be fully investigated but also the scandal of the kickbacks in the now dissolved ANDIS national disability agency revived by Beller’s accusations and the whole underworld of Cerimedo’s murky social network activities. The time when we can pronounce a ringing “J’accuse” may yet come – only that the time is not now.
Turning to other developments in this week now overshadowed by the violence up in Bolivia, perhaps the most significant was the government’s implied admission of economic stagnation for the first time when almost two-thirds of the year is over, accompanying a cautious relaxation of monetary policy – there was even a hint that this year’s growth might be lucky to reach two percent when the 2026 Budget forecast is five percent while the official figure in the World Economic Outlook report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) remains 3.5 percent. That there will be some growth this year seems beyond doubt due to the impressive growth of farm and fuel exports and the mining sector but the bigger those booms, the greater the slump in the rest of the economy must be to produce such a modest bottom line.
The monetary policy shift (which arrived too late for last week’s editorial on “Economic conundrums”) took the form of lifting the restriction of dollar credits to those companies earning in greenbacks although the volume of lending to the economy at large may not exceed 15 percent of bank dollar deposits – a caution dictated by fears of the dollars not being there when there is a run on the currency, as occurred in 2001 (and on a more limited scale last year). Central Bank governor Santiago Bausili made it clear in midweek that there was no intention of throwing money at economic revival and nor is the idea to offer a lifeline to what Economy Minister Luis Caputo continues to perceive as dead-end uncompetitive industries sustained by decades of protectionism – the intended target seems to be rather more labour-intensive construction to create jobs as much as address the housing shortage and a neglected infrastructure.
This move does little to remedy the bigger problem of almost half the population in debt, of whom several million are facing unpayable arrears (mostly outside the banking system), but beyond the specifics or limitations of the measure, it does at least show that a dogmatic libertarian administration is not immune from sporadic tweaks of pragmatism.
This will make it all the harder to predict the outcome of next year’s general elections which have gained an absurdly premature protagonism in news analysis. People are hurting now but we cannot be sure that the government will not move to rectify the grievances and even less certain that such action will do the trick – nor can we have any idea of what the economic cycle will be in the last quarter of 2027. Even less is it possible to foresee future scandals along the lines of the shooting up in Bolivia’s Santa Cruz. These initiate fears of next year’s elections should not paralyse the hard use of action.
