Guido Carelli Lynch
01/13/2021 11:30
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 01/13/2021 3:16 PM
In just 10 days and in the middle of the pandemic, President
Alberto Fernández
disavowed those responsible for the Health portfolio.
Last week it had happened with
Ginés González García
;
between Monday and Tuesday it was repeated with
Carla Vizzotti
.
The President exposed several officials during his first 13 months in office, but only fired two.
In recent days, Fernández publicly exposed the errors of the Minister and the Secretary of Access to Health.
The first had authorized on December 30 an increase of 7% for prepaid medicine companies, which was
corrected hours later
by "express order of the President", as detailed in the Official Gazette.
“Ginés is
right that money is needed
.
But there is one in the Government who knows what is happening throughout the Government, that is Alberto Fernández.
Alberto Fernández knows how we are in fiscal matters and what the inflationary risk is.
And
that was not taken into account by Ginés
”, said the President in the third person and bluntly in an interview on Radio Con Vos.
Alberto Fernández with Santiago Cafiero and Ginés González García, shortly after taking office.
The president overruled his Minister of Health a couple of times.
In this way, the head of state tried to silence health businessmen, who under their breath suggested that
Cristina Kirchner
had ordered a halt to the increase in prepaid payments and to promote a greater participation of the state in the sector.
At the Casa Rosada,
González García had already been exposed
on various occasions, due to the official's verbal incontinence.
Even, shortly after the pandemic broke into the country, they decided to intervene the communication of the ministry.
The last episode before the failed rate increase had been a few days before and off the microphone, regarding the start
of the vaccination operation
before 2021, which the minister had questioned.
With Vizzotti, who gained prominence precisely because of the verbal slips of his superior, the President chose to make his discomfort known, when the number 2 of the Ministry of Health exposed in an interview with
Page 12
the possibility of applying a dose of Sputnik V in instead of the two recommended applications.
"It cut itself off," said the President's main collaborators.
"Reckless", would have been the qualification of the president.
Alberto Fernández in a meeting in Olivos with Felipe Solá.
The chancellor was also questioned in public by the president.
The term was the same and the dynamic was similar, although less harsh, to that used to discredit Foreign Minister
Felipe Solá
when he gave uncomfortable and supposedly non-existent details of the
talk between the President and the
elected
president
of the world's leading power,
Joe Biden
.
The Casa Rosada then made it known that the Minister of Foreign Relations
had not even participated
in the conversation with the next president of the United States, because instead of attending the Rosada, where Fernández was, he went to Olivos.
Solá's sin
, like Vizzotti's now, was the same: publicly exposing a discussion that had taken place inside the government.
In that case, the possibility of asking the successor of Donald Trump to push for the removal of
Mark Rosen
, director of the United States before the IMF.
The disavowal of the Chancellor included a request to the Bloomberg agency by the Secretary of Communication
Juan Pablo Biondi
to deny the Chancellor and a videoconference between the Minister of Economy
Martín Guzmán
and the Argentine director before the loan agency
Sergio Chodos
with Rosen.
Hours later, Fernández considered the conflict "over".
Speeches inconsistent with the official line on foreign policy forced the President to overrule other political ambassadors.
It happened with the Argentine representative to the OAS,
Carlos Raimundi
, who rehearsed a defense of the
Nicolás Maduro
regime
.
Fernández raised his discomfort and ordered the Argentine representative to the Geneva-based organizations, Federico Villegas, to vote against Caracas at the UN Human Rights Council.
Raimundi, despite the offside, decided to stay in office.
"
Nobody leaves the government alone
," says an official with experience at La Rosada.
The former Minister of Territorial Development and Habitat, María Eugenia Bielsa, at a Cabinet meeting.
It was one of the few that had to leave the Government.
A similar situation was repeated with the former ambassador to Venezuela and the United Kingdom
Alicia Castro
, chosen by Fernández to occupy that position in Moscow.
After Castro's umpteenth criticism of the Government and the Foreign Ministry,
the President decided to freeze his appointment
.
It happened in August.
Just in October, the former ambassador
released a letter
in which she stated that she would not assume her position of her own accord.
"I want to present my resignation as ambassador because I do not agree with the current foreign relations policy," she said.
Tightrope walker by nature and owner of a heterogeneous space, the President decided to support lower-ranking officials that no one took the trouble to defend in the ruling party.
The last and most resounding case was that of
Victoria Donda
, head of INADI, who whitewashed that she offered a position in the organization to her former domestic employee in the middle of a private labor negotiation.
The news fell badly in the Executive.
When the news got cold, the president publicly defended it.
"Its nature is not to take advantage of the state," he said.
Nor did he want to expel the national director of Access to Justice
Gabriela Carpineti
who slept in the Etchevehere family camp, when Dolores - the sister of the former president of the Rural Society - let militants of the Artigas Project sleep in the ranch.
In this way, the President avoided a new conflict with
Juan Grabois
, a reference to the Project, the official and an ally of the ruling party.
The exceptions
In a friendly tone, instead the President asked the Minister of Habitat
María Eugenia Bielsa
, one of the “civil servants who does not work (ba) n,” in the words of
Cristina Kirchner
to resign
.
The former lieutenant governor of Santa Fe left 16 days after criticism from the vice president.
A Peronist leader very close to the President
regretted that the figure of the former minister had not been preserved
.
"It was honed a lot and it could have been a benchmark for these elections in Santa Fe, where we don't have many options," he reflected.
Fernández had previously acknowledged that he was disappointed with Bielsa's actions.
"I told María Eugenia that I dreamed that at this point she would be the star minister," Fernández said in an interview with journalist Horacio Verbitsky.
The same source regretted then that the President had not publicly supported and defended Bielsa - from the attack by his own, as well - as he did with the Minister of Social Development
Daniel Arroyo
, in April when the purchases of food with surcharges were made public.
Back then, of course, the polls showed that the President was in his prime.
Alejandro Vanoli with Alberto Fernández, hardly assumed.
The head of the ANSeS was one of the few expelled from the Government.
That detail does not fully explain the actions of the head of state.
A few days before the controversy broke out in Development, he aired his anger with BCRA president
Miguel Pesce
and with the then head of ANSES,
Alejandro Vanoli,
for the lack of coordination that led to thousands of retirees queuing to collect their salaries in the middle of the pandemic.
Vanoli finally
weeks later he would leave his position, already without the support of the vice president.
In August, Fernández
fired
Secretary of Energy
Sergio Lanziani
and replaced him with
Darío Martínez from
Neuquén
.
The reasons, again, had more to do with politics than with management.
In the midst of rumors of oxygenation from the Cabinet when the vaccination process ends, in the Casa Rosada they defend the team of ministers, many of whom
were in the spotlight
after the latest questions from Cristina Kirchner.
Despite everything, the President harangued his collaborators before the end of the year.
Time flies.
