RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Since Argentina gained its independence from the Spanish Crown in 1816, the country has never again had a ruling King. Now, over 2 centuries later, a movement is proposing the establishment of a constitutional parliamentary monarchy that would guarantee the separation of powers and act as “arbiter” of the government’s management: the antidote to ending “institutional decadence.”
“The politician is always thinking about the next election and most of the time he or she does not mind running the country into debt in order to win. So, the right official to exercise the State, which is a long-term, essential institution and on which Justice also depends, is not a politician,” said Mario Santiago Carosini, leader of the Argentine Monarchist Movement.
According to the Constitution, sanctioned in 1853 and reformed several times, Argentina is a federal republic in which the same person holds the office of head of state and head of government.
For Carosini, a certified public accountant by profession, this is the republic’s “basic organizational mistake”: “This is where all the problems arise, the problem of institutional corruption. No one controls him or her and the lack of control is institutionalized,” he stresses.
“The King does not need to have the power to do anything, it should be a power like the King of Spain or the Queen of England has with its nuances, (as) in all parliamentary constitutional systems: the power to defend its citizens from the false promises of its politicians,” he adds.
ALMOST 35 YEARS OF HISTORY
The origin of the Argentine Monarchist Movement, which today has regional delegations, dates back to 1987, when Luis José, Mario’s father, who died in 2014, had a face-to-face debate with a republican in a school in Buenos Aires.
Today, the group is dedicated to peacefully spread their ideas and has, according to its leader, “members” from all parties: “There are Peronists, there are Radicals, there are Liberals and even leftists, the minority, but there are some,” he says.
“We are a group of people who consider that the parliamentary constitutional monarchy is an efficient system in the world. (…) 90% of republics are dictatorships, because if I combine government and state in one person, that is the nature of dictators,” emphasizes Carosini, who mentions Denmark, Japan, Norway, Sweden or the United Kingdom as examples of monarchies that provide a “good standard of living” to their citizens.
And while he recognizes that a monarchy can also have “individual corruption,” he asserts that “not all institutions are corrupt, which is the characteristic of the republic.”
WHO WOULD BE THE KING?
Who would be the King or Queen of Argentina, whose Constitution does not recognize the prerogatives of blood and nobility and where changing the model of the State is not under discussion neither in the high political sphere nor in society?
Carosini suggests one of the daughters of William and Maxima of Holland, since the latter is Argentine by birth, except for the heiress Catherine Amalia: “They have a knowledge of the tradition, of the idiosyncrasy… it would not be a bad idea but it is not the only option,” he emphasizes.
“Argentina has been a monarchy for 3 centuries and a republic for 2 centuries . So our tradition is mostly monarchical. Our great heroes were monarchists,” he adds, and insists that this form of state would be cheaper.
“In the monarchy we have a head of state every 40 years, more or less. While in the republic we have to maintain the privileged retirement, far higher to that of any King, of a head of state every 4 years, plus bodyguards,” adds the leader of the movement, whose Facebook page has over 2,600 followers.
THE MONARCH’S DUTIES
The King’s performance, Carosini proposes, would be controlled by Parliament, whose members, elected at the ballot box, would in turn choose the head of government. And among the monarch’s duties as “arbiter” would be to direct a system of taxpayer protection.
“To moderate means to prevent excesses, and if a politician pledges to lower taxes and later raises them to 100%, he or she is not only using demagogy, lies and psychopathy, but he or she acts to harm everyone,” says the vice-president of the International Monarchist Forum.
Convinced that Argentina is suffering an “institutional decadence” due to the “lack of stability” of the republican system, Carosini is preparing a bill to present to Parliament “in a not too distant future”, and although he assumes the difficulty of its success in the short term, he believes that “great changes” take place during “great crises” such as the current one.
“This symbolic moment to submit our bill is the beginning of the great institutional modification that I have no doubt will take place,” he concludes.
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