European academics: President Mauricio Macri is a threat to democracy in Argentina

Yellow balloons, party music, the family dog ​​Balcarce in the president's couch. The inaugural of Argentine President Mauricio Macri was hailed by the local and international media a "joyous revolution" in Argentina.

Since Macri took office on December 10, there exists in Argentina a climate not experienced since the last military dictatorship ended in 1983. By taking advantage of Parliament's annual summer break and using the fight against drug trafficking as a pretext, the President has declared a state of emergency in the country - a measure that gives the military the opportunity to intervene in domestic security and even shoot down airplanes without warning. No one can go out without identity documents. Not even Mexico has gone so far in its reaction to the perceived threat from organized crime. This occurs despite the fact that Buenos Aires is, with Montevideo, Latin America's safest capital city.

By decree and unconstitutionally, President Macri appointed two of his friends to the Supreme Court and has also repealed the law that limited the monopolization of the media. The number of approved channels controlled by a single hand was not even as high as during the military dictatorship. Meanwhile, critical journalists, or those who simply are not in line with government policy, dismissed from the public channels. Private companies, threatened by a loss of government advertising revenue, have followed suit.

Following the steep reduction on agricultural export taxes and a sharp devaluation of the peso, which redistributes resources to the wealthy who possess US dollars, the Argentine government enacted a wave of layoffs which now totals almost 25,000 employees (and an equal number the private sector). Most of those affected are people who disagree with the ruling government.

The state support functions for work on human rights has been particularly hard hit. Entire departments in several ministries and organizations have been closed while former officials suspected of crimes against humanity have been appointed to government office. The president has refused speak to renowned human rights organizations such as Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo. The Ministry of Culture of the City of Buenos Aires, in line with the national government, stated that the number of disappeared during the last dictatorship "was a lie that was fabricated at the negotiating table in order to get subsidies."

In this climate of widespread intimidation, the police assault against protests carried out by trade unions, the unemployed, women's groups and indigenous groups or the criminalization of the political opposition, unsurprisingly. A rehearsal for the upcoming carnival parade was recently met with police firing shots indiscriminately at anything that moved. Without cause. In order to spread fear.

The best-known individual example (for now) is the imprisonment of Milagro Sala, an indigenous activist and member of Parlasur (Mercosur Parliament). She was arrested after participating in a peaceful protest meeting organized to request an audience with Jujuy Province Governor Gerardo Morales. Morales, an ally of President Macri, has banned the indigenous housing cooperatives and threatening to withdraw all public funding. Amnesty International, the European Parliament, and Parlasur have submitted official protests. The judicial authorities in the province (controlled by President Mauricio Macri by decree) has responded by tightening the conditions of Salas' detention, raiding her home and imprisoning other activists.

The Argentine "new right" is reminiscent of those in Poland and Hungary: limited press freedom, co-optation of the judicial system, persecution of dissidents and armed repression if anyone dares to react. Mauricio Macri, a former president of a great football club with corrupt ties to the hooligans mafia world and the heir to an empire in the financial and media industry, can expect accommodating judges to put judicial cases against him - including corruption and illegal detention and wiretapping - on ice.

Macri is no "Nelson Mandela" - as Luis Majul, a journalist on Macri's payroll, recently exclaimed. He may be more akin to a South American Silvio Berlusconi, a businessman who loves adulation and hates democracy.

In less than two months, Mauricio Macri government has promoted one of the greatest setbacks in terms of human rights in Argentina since the military dictatorship ended in 1983. It is a joyous revolution for those who want bullets directed at the democratic process in Argentina and throughout the region.

Brigitte Adriaensen. Universiteit Nijmegen
Jens Andersen Mann, University of Zurich
Ben Bollig, University of Oxford
Geneviève Fabry, Catholic University of Louvain
Liliana Ruth Feierstein, Humboldt University in Berlin
Anna Forné, University of Gothenburg
John Kraniauskas, Birkbeck College, University of London
Emilia Perassi, Università degli Studi di Milano
Kathrin Sartingen. University of Vienna
Dardo Scavino, Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour