Weekly Report - 21 October 2010 (WR-10-42)

He enraged the government of President Cristina Fernández the first time he did it and now he's at it again. Vice-President Julio Cobos used his position as president of the senate on 14 October to cast the deciding vote in a crucial debate over pensions. Cobos was reviled by the government after performing the same role in July 2008 in a deadlocked vote on agricultural export taxes, which marked the first significant legislative defeat for Fernández or her husband and predecessor Néstor Kirchner in five years. Cobos said he was acting in the national interest, but he had a personal motive: to improve his prospects ahead of next year's presidential elections. Fernández, who called Cobos a “squatter", was forced to take the politically unpopular decision of vetoing the law and will need to find another way of courting Argentina's 5.5m pensioners.