Macri to rule by decree in Argentina, bypassing Congress, until March 1.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri announced just two days after taking office that he will not convene any 'extraordinary' (recess) sessions of Congress during the roughly 80 days remaining until the Argentine Congress inaugurates its next regular session on March 1, 2016. This announcement, made in a meeting with the nation's 23 governors, would allow Macri to use the seldom-exercised constitutional loophole to rule by decree until then.
Macri's principal motivation in choosing to rule by decree instead of calling recess sessions as his predecessors have done in most years, is that his right-wing PRO caucus simply has no majority in either of the two chambers of Congress (it has 41 out of 257 congressmen, and 4 out of 72 senators). His PRO caucus has a loose alliance currently with the centrist UCR - which can add another 50 congressmen and 11 senators - but would find it very difficult to pass any legislation opposed by the center-left FpV and its left-wing allies.
Accordingly, Macri is maneuvering to avoid what could be an embarrassing political defeat if the first bill he submits to Congress is rejected. Instead, he hopes that the nearly three months of rule by decree would give him enough time to negotiate his agenda with the different congressional caucuses and in effect test the waters before introducing future legislation.
This decision has provoked differing reactions within the opposition. Congressman Sergio Massa, leader of centrist Renewal Front (non-Kirchnerist Peronists), defended Macri's decision to govern through 'Decrees of Necessity and Urgency' (DNU) for the next three months.
Congressman Jorge Altamira of the Leftist Workers' Front condemned the decision, however, and warned that "we will have 100 days of rule by decree which will be used to take on more debt and eliminate grain export taxes" (the grain export lobby, which pays around $10 billion in export taxes annually, were leading contributors to the Macri campaign). Altamira urged President Macri to instead "convene Congress, and waive the use of decrees."
"Taking on debt without going through Congress," Altamira reminded the president, "is unconstitutional."
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This was a very brash and risky move, coming on his third day in office. The last president to frequently resort to this loophole, Carlos Menem, was practically destroyed politically during his second term in large part because of it - and Menem was a real pro compared to this petulant child.
I mentioned the Cayman Islands because it's also widely suspected that Macri will use this window to unilaterally pay Paul Singer's Cayman Islands vulture fund the billion dollars or so he's demanding from Argentina for his $48 million black-market bond purchase in 2008 (the bonds are currently worth around $200 million, which Argentina had offered to pay him despite the fact he's a holdout - and therefore not legally entitled to any money at all).
Singer, btw, helped bankroll Macri's right-wing, xenophobic party (PRO). I guess it stands for PROstitute. 
