Coronavirus in Argentina: dangerous hugs and private chats, between government inmates and the opposition

Santiago Fioriti

05/30/2020 - 23:55

• Clarín.com
• Politics

This is not the first time they have asked him: who cares for the President?

Alberto Fernández's friends are often uneasy when they see him surrounded by many people or find out the number of visitors who enter and leave the presidential residence. Those friends are not necessarily part of the daily ritual of the head of state. There is a division between his confidants in life, even though several of them are also politicians, and the closest officials. In the last days, that inmate was refloated from the tours that Fernández made in various provinces. The most uncomfortable moment occurred on Thursday, when he was without a mask in the meeting with Gildo Insfrán. Not only that: she hugged him several times, kissed him and made a comment in his ear.  In view of all. When leaving the meeting,He greeted people and took photos, also without a mask and without respecting the distance of the protocol.

"Of course I told him it had been wrong," said one of his friends who followed the images on television. In the presidential environment there were two readings. A contemplative: "It is true that it can be a risk, more in symbolic than health terms, but you have to understand Alberto. People want to see him, they want to take pictures. It is not easy ...". And another less forgiving: "We told him to take care of himself before, during and after. There was no case."  

Excursions in the interior show a hyperactive Fernández. For the first time in almost three months, he is trying to look over the pandemic. They are sketches. He continues to believe, with the words of a lawyer, that "the legal asset to be protected is human life" . However, although the decision and the discourse continue to take root in the fact that the loss of life does not return, but not the economic collapse, even those who adhere most to this idea begin to transmit their nerves. Not only because of the resounding drop in activity.

The warning lights came on in front of some images that show that it will be increasingly difficult to contain the social moodiness. Unlike the last crack that the country had, in 2001, there are now cell phones with video cameras, whatsapp and social networks. Any citizen is one click away from knowing what is happening in any corner of Argentina. This week there were some advances of what is coming. Sequences taken by anonymous citizens broadcast the closure of their own businesses or the tour of entire galleries without activity and with definitive closure posters.

An incipient rebellion is felt in a sector that suffers twice. The conditions of isolation, on the one hand, and the confirmation that their income is reduced or that they are directly null, on the other. For now they are marginal groups. But there are at least two months of confinement ahead. And the worst of the contagion curve remains to come, it is impossible to predict how far it will go.

The ghost that hovers in power is that the highest death curve meets the most critical stage of the household economy. It was not in the plans when the confinement strategy was devised: the peak simply went too long in time. The Government knows that the economy resigned. He would not be allowed to lose the health battle.

The activity produces devastating indicators daily. 87% of families became indebted in May for not being able to pay for essential services such as electricity and gas. It is logical because income fell to 57.6% and the industry contracted 27% in April. GDP decreased 4.8% in the first quarter of the year. The projections in terms of poverty speak of alarming levels. The queues in the dining rooms are getting longer.

The Executive reacted in recent days with a change in speech. Alberto Fernández's statements, at times in an angry tone, demonstrate this. The crisis is not because of quarantine, he said, but because of the pandemic. He stopped talking about the eventual health success and went on to warn that confinement is not a solution but a way to manage the escalation of infections and to prepare the health system so that the sanitariums do not collapse. That explanation has a reason for being: many people still believe that the quarantine was imposed to avoid deaths . A real risk that could take the effect of a boomerang for governments.

Fernández asked "not to discuss any further." Who was it targeting? Both he and Cristina refer to certain businessmen, whom they see playing in tandem with orthodox economists and communicators. Now I could connect them to the stream of intellectuals who speak of "infection." Kirchnerism accuses them of protecting "great interests", even at the cost of loss of life.

What is not said is that there is also a rift between health specialists. In other words, the applause that the official policy reaps for social isolation is beginning to be nuanced by experts who are not part of the staff that lives in Olivos. With Monday's newspaper, some dare to argue that the Casa Rosada hastened to close the economy and that, when it wanted to rethink the strategy, it was too late . And they say something else. That this staff convinced the President to act quickly, neglecting two central issues: the quarantine exit strategy and the mental health of those who would not tolerate so many months of not being able to go out.

The deliberations take place while the tension rules in the towns and is already of equal concern to the City and the province of Buenos Aires. Both administrations rolled back some flexibilities or filed the opening requests of various unions that today cannot control the discontent of their bases.

The weather is starting to get thick in the most populated district in the country, even though the City continues to be at the top of the statistics. For now, Axel Kicillof and his ministers stopped looking at the other side of General Paz. Now they are the ones who prove that the wave is coming upon them and there will be no one to blame.  Villa Azul does not emerge as an isolated case. Perhaps that caused Kicillof's speech to also undergo some tweaks. Modicos, it's true. Today he talks about all working together, the ruling party and the opposition, and he even toned down in his media appearances. 

Horacio Rodríguez Larreta explains to his team that Kicillof does not act hand-to-hand as shown in public. He has discussed it with María Eugenia Vidal. Both believe that the governor is under great pressure from Cristina Kirchner.Vidal chatted with him three times since the pandemic began. "Count me in," he wrote in the first shipment. Then he asked him to receive the block leaders of Juntos por el Cambio and in a third contact he interceded on behalf of the opposition mayors. Kicillof received them. The representatives of Cambiemos sent him social, health and economic proposals. Then there was a barrage of criticism of the Vidalis administration and the dialogue cooled.

"It could not be otherwise, " say the leaders most involved with Mauricio Macri. The former president is still confined and silent in the fifth Los Abrojos. Differences in opposition are also evident. Larreta, the best positioned, speaks every day with the President and with Kicillof, and that generates misgivings. Patricia Bullrich and Miguel Pichetto are very hard with this coexistence and express Macri's vision. Radicals, like Elisa Carrió, hardly speak. Silence is health, they think.