Ignacio Zuleta
02/16/2020 - 18:07
- Clarín.com
- Politics
The President's office met in Olivos
The photo that the Government spread at dawn on Sunday, with the roast of Olivos, is more than an episode of political gastronomy. It is the formalization of the albertista team that is equivalent in other administrations -like the one of the United States-, to the "Office of the President". That group is made up of Alberto Fernández's friends, and they belong to Buenos Aires Peronism. To them he entrusts the intimate debate of the issues that later pass to the ministers. It is more than a rock, although it seems, because amalgam is friendship. Something explainable in a president who is not a politician , but a designated official as a result of a foreign political construction. How will he not turn to friends?
This family portrait, of the Civil House of Alberto - Guillermo Oliveri, Miguel Pesce, Julio Vitobello, Alberto Iribarne, Eduardo Valdés, Raúl Garré ... - makes absences relevant, explainable by some irritating anecdote generated in the first two months of the management Gustavo Béliz , for example, or Santiago Cafiero . The first is a victim of the Vatican inmate by the appointment of the ambassador. The second runs the risk of becoming the Marcos Peña of the administration: the buffer of complaints, for accelerating or slowing down procedures that nobody wants to attribute to the President. Not to be angry; better a pigeon shot on the chief of staff.
Nor do there appear allies of the homeland or massism, provisional in the presidential heart, are other friendships. Not even the strong men of the cabinet, such as Martín Guzmán, Marcela Losardo, Wado De Pedro, Felipe Solá, Ginés González García . Alberto discusses the issues first with the group of friends, and then moves them to the stars of the team. On Saturday night two key ambassadors, Iribarne and Argüello, were fired, but not Daniel Scioli , who with Solá attend the most critical front that is Brazil. That Saturday roast coined the method of concentrating authority on the dual figure of President and Chief of Staff. That is why it is advisable to review the roast tabletop agenda, waiting for it to open, after 12 on Saturday, the celebration of Valdés' birthday. Incidentally: will have roasted this Wednesday in Olivos for Cristina, who's birthday?
This week, something to lower rates
In the privacy of these enclosures of high and golden roofs of Olivos, other obsessions surfaced , such as Alberto's due to the level of interest rates, especially personal loans and credit cards. There was Miguel Pesce (head of the Central), who takes note of everything and confirms the leading role he has always had with Alberto, before and now. The table heard that this level of rates is always high, even in countries with a more stable economy, as was the case in Henrique Meirelles' Brazil. When I was at the Central Bank with Lula and while Brazil was growing, those rates were 80%. In Chile, with zero inflation, they can reach 20/30%. The reasons? The usual , that the banking market is an oligopolistic market. Can anything be done?
This week the government will do something, a way to cut the anger of retirees from the middle up, to have a minimal increase when they expected more. These liabilities are those that go out on the street, have the capacity to express their opinions in their families, say they have contributed more than those of the average and low, many of whom retired in moratoriums without contributions. The difficulty is that banks such as the Nation are part of that oligopoly - Garré, designated director - or the Province, which are part of the problem .
Three-band carambolas: Venezuela, Trump and debt
To retain from that desktop, first of all, the obsession of the dome for global issues. They discount an arrangement with the United States , which goes through the saga of meetings about Venezuela, Alberto in Europe and Solá in Brasilia. The surface result is the statement by Juan Guaidó on Saturday, that Argentina will play an important role in the program to overcome the crisis, through free elections in Venezuela. An informative bombshell , if the agenda was not saturated with summer trivialities. That new positioning of Guaidó, which occurs after his public and private meetings with Trump in the United States, values the position of the Argentine Government. It was imposed with difficulty by the management of Macri, which departed from the drastic solutions of the United States, and continues them, with other music, Alberto.
The key is in the president's meeting with Enrique Iglesias in Madrid on January 4. This Uruguayan - very senior in politics - is listened to at age 89 with more attention than ever, as an advisor to the Contact Group for Venezuela of the European Union. Mark the EU libretto against Venezuela. His diagnosis is final: that country is experiencing a humanitarian crisis - health, hunger, civil rights - huge, before which the international community cannot remain silent. And less support the Maduro government , as do sectors of Spanish politics. The request to Argentina, which can unlock this key mess for Trump, for reasons of domestic vote for re-election - is to add Argentina and Mexico to the Contact group. Iglesias asked.
-No problem, let's announce it, Alberto said.
-No, let's wait a bit (they told him), because we can't reveal what we're talking about.
- We're going to summon them. Do not say anything.
This recipe goes through giving the UN a more important role in assisting the victims of this humanitarian crisis . That means silver, and silver for the UN is the United States, which until today has a policy of blockade and isolation that the countries of the region reject. In that Madrid meeting there were criticisms of the rush of some governments to accept Guaidó as president of Venezuela, because that had locked them in a cage with the Washington hawks. Macri's Argentina joined that club , as was the Spanish Pedro Sánchez. Alberto on assuming took off that commitment, and withdrew the credentials from the ambassador of Guaidó, who had a contract in the Buenos Aires legislature - a third-world detail to put in the novel. Sanchez assumed his new mandate and did not want to receive Guaidó, on the same days when Alberto was there.
The Lima Group reviews everything this week in Canada
Solá's talk was completed with the Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo in Brasilia.
- We agree to seek the same for Venezuela, democracy; But by different paths.
There he swore that Argentina does not leave the Lima Group , but that club will review the course, because what it has done so far is useless. From that minute came the initiative of Canada and Peru that have called a meeting of ministers this week in Canada, to reset the agenda in light of the EU request, to join Mexico and Argentina to the Contact Group. Solá will be represented by his vice chancellor Pedro Tettamanti. He celebrates that, if there is light at the end of the tunnel, it is far from the Chavez songs of the other wings of his own government .
The chancellor is credited with having twisted his arm to more than one. For example, to Mike Pompeo, who proposed at the III Third Hemispheric Ministerial Conference to Fight against Terrorism in Bogotá, in mid-January, a incendiary final communiqué with inadmissible sentences for the Argentine agenda. The delegates of Solá - of the undersecretary level - say that they have thwarted that attempt, and have achieved moderation on the part of the Trump chancellor . Although if you read that final document, you have to imagine what it could be. He points out as terrorists Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Shining Path and the National Liberation Army (ELN) of Colombia, in terms that imply an alignment behind the Washington agenda . It is understood that there is confidence in the improvement of relations with the United States. (The full text can be read at: https://www.cancilleria.gov.co/newsroom/publiques/comunicado-conjunto-iii-conferencia-ministerial-hemisferica-lucha-terrorismo). It should not be surprising because Peronist governments have always aligned themselves, above or below domestic rhetoric, with the empire's agenda.
Guzman, on exam in Saudi Arabia and from there to Washington
Guzman will test if that alignment helps in the pocket, that is, in the arrangement with the IMF. He already advanced in Congress that is based on a four-year pause for the surplus, which would allow debt to be paid; and the help of private bondholders "who cooperate" - a well-defined Peronist definition implies that the bad ones are "those who do not cooperate" -. Critics present it as another round in the capture of large boxes to finance the State . In 2008 they were the income of the field, through the withholdings and the nationalization of the retirements. Now it is up to the box that was left, that of the creditors of the debt. We are not in 2001 and in the Government they understand that, with the local capital market, the BCRA and the exchange rate can finance that financing. Critics believe that the announcement that there will be no surplus until 2023 expresses everything, because even Roberto Lavagna , renegotiating part of the debt in 2005, secured a 3-point surplus of GDP. Nuances of the new solidarity economy.
Guzmán goes to Saudi Arabia with Pesce, to the G20 Finance Ministers Summit, and plans another coffee with Kristalina, the IMF chief with whom he has coined a special relationship. Guzmán is a character rather than hermetic and solipsist. Do not know doctrinal evidence, except his passion for gymnastics and fencing of La Plata, which seems to be the only thing that reveals. I would like another profile, for example, to go from your Belgrano-Núñez department to the subway ministry. Custody convinced him to better drive, and polarized. He will be in Ryad for a couple of days and travels directly to Washington in the last week of the month. From there he will make announcements that will warm the climate for Alberto's speech on March 1 before Congress.
If this is not the Lawfare, the Lawfare where it is
I went out to look for the Lawfare that some thought they saw and in the end I found it. It is produced by the government in two stages. First, an unprecedented agreement precipitated in the history of the Magistracy Council . For the first time, the presidency and the vice will be in charge of two representatives of the same estate, that of the judges. One expresses the intentions of the ruling party, Alberto Lugones, the other of the opposition, Ricardo Recondo. The new government sent the representative of the Executive Power, Gerónimo Ustarroz, brother of Interior Minister Eduardo de Pedro, to negotiate those positions that contradict the historical position of Cristina de Kirchner, which was always to take away the power of the representatives of Justice to give them to those of the Congress. That was the basis of the 2010 reform that rearranged the representations provided in the Constitution amended in 1994.
Peronism always opposed the magistrates having too much control. There was even an attempt to convert those representatives into elective positions alongside those of national legislators. Justice hit the ground with that attempt . In the agreement in the Council of the Magistracy, the Selection Commission was in charge of Graciela Camaño, which represents the interblock near Lavagna and which was built on a fraction of massism that did not return with the head of the Renovating Front to the Peronism of the Institute Homeland. As Chairman of the Administration Committee, the radical Juan Pablo Mas Vélez, from the Nosiglia-Angelici sector , remained. In the accusation was the representative of the universities, Diego Molea. He is a lawyer who went through massism and was approached to the Council by the representative of the PRO, José Torello. In Regulation was Vanesa Siley, the only explicit Christian with charge in commissions.
This drawing of the new leadership of the Council is the result of an agreement in which Peronism exhibits a different face than it showed until now, because it expresses Alberto more than Cristina. The balance of the result and the power given to the judges seems to accompany the Government's intention to reach a new relationship with Justice, which it has accused of persecuting former Cristina government officials.
The second round of Lawfare is the reform project for the judges' retirement system, which increases ages and sets conditions that restrict benefits. The end result of that project is uncertain. But in fact it is an invitation for dozens of judges to resign their positions to preserve the benefits of the current system and not lose them after the reform. That will create dozens of vacancies for the Government to impose its own judges. It is the reason why the Ministry of Justice requested the return of the requests for agreements sent to Congress before last December 10 to appoint judges and prosecutors throughout the country. These specifications had been agreed in the Council of the Magistracy and in the Congress between Cambiemos and Peronism. But the current management has requested that these proposals be reviewed. Between the superpower of the judges in the Council and the precipitation of vacancies, the judicial reform to which the Government will complete the letter in the project that promises to send to Congress is already triggered. What judge, politicians believe, is going to mess with us now? That is Lawfare, not what we have at home.
