Ignacio Zuleta
08/16/2020 - 19:31
- Clarín.com
- Politics
They file the quarantine for judicial reform, which does not kill
The Government sent the word quarantine to the archive to take advantage of the last remains of the emergency, to speed up the project in which it believes internal unity is at stake: judicial reform . It is a muscle-building effort in which the three members of the triphasic Government will play the rest of their mandate. Cristina is locked in that fence that Peronism always tends around the province of Buenos Aires. She is a victim, like other chiefs of that district, of isolation from the rest of the country and of Peronism. That fence, which prevented anyone from entering politics outside the historical leaderships (Cafiero, Duhalde), in the end does not let them out .
The unity pact entrusted Cristina with the management of the Senate, where the challenge is to break the opposition and achieve two-thirds, to advance the issues that interest her, such as beheading the system of prosecutors, judges and the Supreme Court. As long as those powers are not reviewed, the project to disarm the judicial watchmaking inherited from the Macri government is useless. The tranquility in the judicial cases of the vice president depends on these changes . She cannot believe that she has won the elections and time passes and she continues to be entangled in issues that she attributes, with conviction or necessity, to battles of "lawfare", politicized justice.
An image of the opposition march against judicial reform, on August 1. Photo AP.
Fierce revenge of time / That makes you see what you loved undone: the government in which you participated came to sue plain citizens for publishing consumer price indexes inattentive to those of the government. That is self-righteousness . A "chocobar" - shot in the back - to the innocent economists. His project is not to promote a youth utopia but to dissipate the tribulations of a former president, the drama of the elderly that is a pandemic among the members of Grupo Puebla. An impulse to nationalize their personal interest and confuse it in the public interest of the Government.
The one that has to be played now is Massa
Its partners are far from it. Alberto aspires, in any case, to make a revolution in the staff room of the UBA Law School. He sent his lunga judicial manu , Vilma Ibarra, to clarify that Olivos does not want to know anything about the expansion of the Court . The same says Sergio Massa, the third in the ruling tripod on this reform, very far from others that he dreamed of, also for justice, which gave him more. That of the anti-guarantee Penal Code made Cristina back down in the Zaffaroni-Pinedo commission project, the most consensual of all, and which never saw the light. She never dared to send him to Congress in 2014, on the eve of the end of her government. Is Massa now going to work with loyalty to his partners, so that Deputies have a quorum and what remains of that reform can be discussed?
Sergio Massa, head of the Chamber of Deputies, in one of the entries to Congress.
The Senate will try to approve it on August 27 , according to the internal minutes of the Instituto Patria. The opposition will not give the number in the lower house to meet. The numbers for a fight of this type are today 129 to 125 , which is what the ruling party and opposition have added in rabid votes such as the dollarization of bonds in the expansion of the Budget. With 129 is the right quorum. It depends on the sum of the ruling party plus their friends in the Lavagnist bloc -which is divided if the report on Graciela Camano is read well-, the four deputies of Juan Schiaretti -who have said that they do not have an opinion but that they want to give the debate, that is that give a quorum-; and the block of José Luis Ramón's Mendoza, signed today in favor of Massa.
This is not a guarantee, he is not an amplifier of the Court, he does not believe that neither he nor Alberto , who do not have legal causes, have to shed blood for a reform that in the best of cases will come out by a tiny difference in votes. In other words, it will not last long. They both fear that the overdose of Christianity on the deck of this ship will once again be a factor of division in Peronism, and the aura of unity that allowed the two to regain public jobs last year will be lost.
The Tribulations of a "Democracy"
The X-ray of the ruling pole reveals kinks, sprains and fissures that distance them from the unity of objectives, the only thing that can justify the association between three characters such as Alberto, Cristina and Massa. They come from different backgrounds, with different and even contrary ideas and methods. If they do not focus the task of government on a common goal, they will end up overwhelmed by circumstances and anecdotes. One year after the PASO of 2019, they have not managed to design a common purpose that goes beyond obtaining power. They are united by the impulse of the populist format, which can lead to a formal democracy towards what Pierre Hassner calls a "democratization" (mix of democracy + dictatorship). It is the system that wears the barely formal garb of a democracy. What the political scientist Fareed Zakaria called "illiberal democracies" .
The purpose of power in a democracy is to make it irreversible , and for that it has to reverse everything that was done before. For the Government, it means disarming all the political engineering of the Cambiemos government: justice, relations with the provinces, electoral regime, fiscal consensus, relations with the legislative and judicial powers. "The irreversibility project recycles the old revolutionary ideal", says Pierre Rosanvallon when he analyzes these political pandemics ("The century of populism: History, theory, criticism", Bs. As., Ed. Manantial, 2020). Populism, describes this analyst, makes a polarized democracy flourish "that reduces or annihilates the role of independent authorities. In the process, constitutional courts are also modified in order to populate them with magistrates loyal to the new regime, in the name of the absolute supremacy of the government. popular power decided at the polls. " These manual rulings replace the action of a government wounded by the inherited financial crisis, the plague , and the disunity of three weak partners subjected to internal fights that distort any initiative.
Privatists vs. statists delay a plan for gas
It is the reason why Alberto says he has no plan . The confession triggers the fight of the tribes to impose their own. On Friday, the government had to present the final version of the Gas 4 plan, a program to promote that industry, which has the support of businessmen and governors, but which faces the two sectors of the government, statist and privatized. The statists resist in the control bodies that were occupied by delegates from the Instituto Patria, such as Francisco Bernal in Enargas and Federico Basualdo in ENRE. The privatists have made progress in the “Gas 4” plan, tied to Alberto and Matías Kulfas, who seek to maintain a public-private participation format. The presentation was postponed to next Friday 21 and will be the subject of a decree that the Government promises before the end of the month.
Minister Matías Kulfas advances a plan to improve production and investments in the energy sector. Photo Luciano Thieberger.
The plan trusts to provide conditions for the re-railing of the sector, hit by the crisis in the hydrocarbon business in the world , the prevailing economic crisis, and the effects of the plague. The governors of producing provinces may raise differences, but they do not reject it because it protects their royalties. Neuquén are enthusiastic because since natural gas is the source that covers 60% of the needs of the national energy matrix, the plan can generate energy supply, with investments that make it possible to reduce gas imports, and provide energy in the months of winter. The people of Mendoza, who have oil, for now look at it from the outside, but they always have a part of Vaca Muerta for them. The plan proposes 4-year contracts - renewable for the offshore specialty for a similar term - and allows the granting of firm export permits during months of low domestic demand. This expands demand and can generate foreign exchange into the country.
Who puts the bell to the stocks
The plan is described in a 93-point report circulated last week by the Hydrocarbons Undersecretary Juan José Carbajales with the title of "NATURAL GAS SUPPLY AND DEMAND SCHEME 2020-2024". On Friday, the Kulfas ministry had prepared a presentation before governors and businessmen, all excited about the plan, but at the last minute it was suspended for a week. The document is long and exhaustive, and some asked to review it well before formalizing this, which would be the third presentation. There is also a detail to be resolved, perhaps the most important: no plan can work with the dollar stocks . Gas is a global business and is made in dollars.
The first presentation was made by Carbajales ten days ago in a virtual chat with the AmCham (Argentine American Chamber of Commerce) where he was acclaimed by representatives of the firms that are in business. They withheld from that statement that the official hinted that there will be an increase in rates and that the subsidies will be used to pay the difference. Hours later, on Thursday, August 6, Kulfas made another presentation to the companies together with Carbajales and the CEO of YPF, Sergio Affronti. This group is at odds with that of the officials of the statist wing. The controller of Enargas, Bernal, was invited, but he did not appear. Bernal is the hammer of businessmen, who attribute to him belonging to the tribe that wants the return of Segba and Gas de Estado, two stamps for nostalgia.
The sector achieved in the Senate the repeal of Mauricio Macri's DNU, which ordered the payment to gas companies of compensation for the pesification of rates. This rule allocated resources for more than $ 25,000 million for companies, in 30 installments as of January 1, 2019, of which only one had been paid as of December 10. Bernal denounced the former Macri officials for having ordered those payments and paralyzed everything. Kulfas' insistence on the Gas 4 plan implies an advance by the companies, which have heard since December 10 that the minister and Alberto Fernández believe that there should be a change in rates. But so far nobody moves a paper.
The opposition wants to force face-to-face debates
The bidding between sectors paralyzes this, which could be a plan for those who have no plan (Alberto). The entrepreneurs rely on Kulfas plan , but want some proof of love on compliance with the Government of commitments to undertake for 4 and 8 years (off shore). They have been promised the creation of a trust for USD 500 million to anchor a bond that ensures the payment of subsidies. They already cut their supplies with the annulment in the Senate of DNU 1053/2018. The opposition has rejected this repeal, which the businessmen hope will not be perfected in Deputies, where there are no sessions until there is a friendly coexistence agreement, which allows remote debates.
Mario Negri during a virtual chat with Alberto Fernández, in mid-July. Calls for the return of face-to-face debates in Deputies.
Today the lower house is paralyzed and the opposition is waiting for a meeting of Parliamentary Labor - the heads of the bloc - to be called to agree on an agenda that cannot include "hate projects" (Vicentin, judicial reform, trial of Procurator Casal , repeal of the DNU of Macri). They do not believe that Massa will adopt Cristina's praetorian system in the Senate, of dealing with everything in special sessions. In this format, the agenda does not arise from Parliamentary Labor but from the real desire of the ruling party. At this point, the radicals have gone further because they understand that they have not been consulted.
The same reproach is made by the unions, who say they do not know anything about those 93 points. A document from the Mosconi Institute, the radical think tank for energy issues, points to objections. The main one is that it does not plan to increase production but to ensure that the current one is maintained, and that no one knows where the funds for the subsidy will come from. For this reason, the label directed by Jorge Lapeña, on behalf of his party, demands that this plan be discussed within the budget for 2021, which must be presented on September 15. The Government says in the minute that it circulated on Friday, that the plan will take effect on an uncertain date: "September / October 2020, depending on the timeframes necessary to achieve a greater injection in May 2021." With that there is no time to discuss it in the budget.
The Nation threatens a law to slap royalties
It worries everyone, especially the governors, that the Government is talking about preparing a new hydrocarbon law to trigger new mechanisms to promote the activity. During the Kirchner cycle, they managed to disrupt that initiative, because they know that the Nation is always on the lookout to handcuff something in the distribution of subsoil resources , which are property of the provinces. Nestor Kirchner believed in 2003 that the assignment of these resources to the provinces in the 1994 Constitution had been a mistake, because it took away from the Nation the way to audit wealth. Before, when he was governor and conventional, he had voted on that clause. Later he tried laws resisted by the governors. He was only able to get out the so-called "short law" of 2006, to impose some federal government control on the business. It closed a long debate in which the Nation lost the game. Every time the governors hear about the hydrocarbon law, they call the police.
Dr. Strangelove's red button
The relish with which Alberto said "the red button is always at hand" expresses the happiness of governments for having regained some kind of control over a rebellious society, fed up with any form of government. When we talk about populism - that rubbery word, concealing, stigmatizing, but necessary according to Rosanvallon - we are talking about demagoguery . It is what governments deploy to contain the outrage that is already planetary, with colored mirrors and pushing forward the solution of problems. It is difficult for them to have another resource, that is why they celebrate when they have a lever close to their hand.
The crisis of representative systems is global. There was a pre-virus testimony in the Joker rebellions, which swept away almost all the governments of the region in 2019, and shake those of the rest of the world. The effort of the so-called populisms is to contain the unstoppable rebellion of the indignant of all colors. The plague made everything worse , because it uncovered the bad weather that hurts, not the lower classes, but the bourgeoisie of the big cities, and pierces the projects of the richest. The outraged before - Spain by the bursting of the housing bubble since 2008, those on Wall Street in 2009 - were a cream of helplessness. Today that helplessness seems to reach everyone. The plague unifies the previous fight between the people of Somewhere (somewhere) against the people of Anywhere (anywhere), between those who believed they could survive only in their land and culture, and those who believed themselves with the capabilities, skills and resources to adapt to any place (David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, London, C Hurst & Co, 2017).
That crisis was advanced by the maroon Argentina, the forerunner of all world trends , with that slogan of 200: Picket and saucepan / The fight is one. The outraged people of all the scale have seized, thanks to the revelations of the Joker, the red button of which Alberto presumes. Be careful, the red button is somewhere else. That is why the government is outraged by the resistance of the opposition to continue being confined in the corralito of remote debate, for the most important projects of Congress. It takes away control of the button. One of the last resources left to governments that appeal to any form of control, although, as Rosanvallon recalls, populism has its roots in the most pestilential traditions of the extreme right. This governing Peronism boasts of populism, protected by the indifference of that force to being reminded of its authoritarian format. Rather it seeks to vindicate it with mentions of the red button, a symbol of dangerous arbitrariness, Dr. Strangelove.