Natasha Niebieskikwiat
09/10/2020 - 14:55
Clarín.com
Economy
Argentine diplomacy was mobilizing this Thursday in Washington at the offices of the Inter-American Development Bank, since at night
the deadline for the presentation of candidacies for the presidency of the organization expires, which will take place on Saturday 12.
Gustavo Beliz has not yet announced if he will run for the presidency of the IDB
At this time, the Secretary for Strategic Affairs,
Gustavo Béliz
, continued in his usual hermetic silence, and without having communicated whether he finally made official his intention before the IDB to compete for the presidency of the organization, where he worked between 2005 and 2013. In Presidency and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs assured that he is
still in the race,
but under his breath they admitted that it is an
impossible mission.
It happens that the negotiations that the Argentine representative to the IDB,
Guillermo Francos
and Ambassador
Jorge Argüello
are
holding in the capital of the United States
, are also due to the fact that the Government is negotiating the future of its relationship with the IDB.
Argentina led the battle of a group of allies against Donald Trump's candidate,
Mauricio Claver Carone
(European Union, Chile, Mexico, Costa Rica) who unsuccessfully sought to add 25% of Bank members so that they
did not give a quorum
at the meeting Saturday and thus postpone the election of the president, in which the two contenders would be the Cuban American Claver Carone, and the Argentine Béliz.
But this Thursday
there would already be a quorum
to start the virtual meeting that will take place on
Saturday 8.30am Washington time
, and also in the government they consider
that battle lost
without saying it in public.
At this time two important things happened.
One of them is accurately detailed by the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia.
"The country that has broken with the bloc opposed to Claver-Carone's election is Mexico,
whose center-left government has rejected more than anyone else the policies of regime change in Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia defended by the Cuban-American hawk.
The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), however, seems to have decided not to run the risk of opposing the candidate of the powerful northern neighbor.
In this way, the main ally that
Alberto Fernández
claims to have
in the region today - the Mexican president - would return to the exercise of what he already showed with his embrace of Donald Trump in the White House last July: a
progressive
speech -
Mexico supports to Béliz as the Latin American candidate - and an
enormous
pragmatism
with his partner to the north.
Enviable considering the sidereal distance between Argentina and Brazil today.
Until now, the only official words on the election of the IDB president have been those of Foreign Minister
Felipe Solá
on Kirchner radio station El Uncover
. "The American candidate seems (that) he has a quorum and the numbers to win. There are 17 countries in America." ,
the minister told what added a detail.
Argentina relied on the words of the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, to postpone the elections of the president to March 2021. But, Solá admitted - "there was a decision by Europe that did not come" .
Minister Solá referred to the individual positions of the European countries that are part of the 48 IDB members with different scopes.
Among them (Germany, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Slovenia, Spain, Finland, France, Holland, Italy, Norway, Portugal, United Kingdom, Sweden and Switzerland) there is no climate to follow the request for postponement of the elections by from Borrell, who is Spanish.
Still, the election of the IDB is a wound in itself between a part of Latin America and the United States.
It is that although the IDB does not have it in writing as a rule, the United States - which has 30% of the Bank shares - always managed the vice presidency, while a Latin American managed the first place-
In addition, it also marks the differences with natural allies of Argentina.
Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay now make up the group of countries that will vote for Claver Carone.
On this side are also: Colombia, Ecuador, Bahamas, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Venezuela, which is controversially represented in the IDB shareholders by the parallel government by Juan Guaidó.
Béliz's candidacy at this time - last week the Costa Rican Laura Chinchilla was dropped from the race for the IDB - also takes into account not minor aspects of a negotiation in which the Government must now use Mexican pragmatism.
Claver Carone was a key man for Trump's negotiations with the IMF when it decided to grant a millionaire loan to the administration of Mauricio Macri.
Two other issues are highly relevant to the region. The candidacy may be controversial because of the wounds it opens, but it is clear that Trump took advantage of the mistakes of Latin America to enter a financial region - the Bank in this case - where China is currently treading heavily. And furthermore, the Wall Street Journal said this week, "Argentina is particularly concerned. Among the imbalances that Claver-Carone could correct is the fact that Argentina retains a third of the bank's top positions assigned to borrowing countries, although it has only 11 , 4% of bank ownership. "