Amid a financial collapse, Buenos Aires mayor earmarks $14,000 for astrologer
Documents obtained from the municipal government of Buenos Aires reveal that Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta has earmarked 430,000 pesos ($14,000) this year for the services of an astrologer.
The astrologer, María Luján Brinzoni, is, according to documents, tasked with providing the mayor and 29 other city officials "psychometric evaluations in virtual modality, coordination of evaluators and the evaluated, and their corresponding reports."
The earmark, though a miniscule part of the city's $11.5 billion budget this year, is all the more controversial given the nation's current financial collapse.
GDP has plummeted 6.7% as of June, and so far this year $25 billion has fled the country with the peso losing nearly half its value as a $100 billion debt bubble from President Mauricio Macri's three years in office has led to investor fears of a likely bond default.
Rodríguez Larreta, 52, belongs to Macri's hard-right PRO party, and served as chief of staff to Macri during the latter's 2007-15 tenure as mayor.
Rodríguez Larreta is seen as the head of the PRO's moderate wing. He backs abortion rights, and has stepped up investments in public housing and other public works since becoming mayor in 2015.
Like Macri, however, he has reaped criticism for underutilizing health, housing, and education budgets passed by his own, PRO-dominated City Legislature - $211 million last year alone.
Numerous public schools have had to suspend classes this winter due to a lack of working electricity and gas.
The city nevertheless ran a $555 million deficit last year - a trend likewise inherited from Macri.
Good heavens
Rodríguez Larreta also shares an interest in astrology with his former boss.
Macri has employed the services of an Ecuadorian occultist, Shirley Barahona - who was on the presidential payroll as recently as last year.
Barahona was widely believed to be behind a fiasco surrounding Macri's December 10, 2015, inaugural, when Macri insisted on it being held at midnight, rather than at noon as scheduled.
Numerous astrologers noted at the time that auspicious Jupiter was 'rising' (i.e. on the eastern horizon) at midnight that day. Macri, however, was duly sworn in at noon.
The controversy also recalls former President Isabel Perón, whose chaotic, 1974-76 administration was highly influenced by her longtime secretary and astrologer, José López Rega.
Isabel convinced her husband, the late populist leader Juan Perón, to incorporate the "warlock" into his inner circle in 1965, and when Perón died in 1974, Isabel, who became president, retained the fascist-leaning López Rega as her chief adviser.
Historians believe his interference to have been a key cause for the March 1976 coup.
At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infonews.com%2Fnota%2F318044%2Fmanochantas-la-ciudad-derrochara-430-mil&edit-text=
Mayor Rodríguez Larreta (right) and the crisis-ridden Macri: Faulting the stars, not themselves.
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