Ignacio Zuleta
01/17/2021 19:11
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 01/17/2021 7:11 PM
Vaccines: some carry special, others the common
The tumultuous transition in America provides the universe with an opportunity to rearm the geopolitics that Donald Trump had turned around.
The change serves to take renewed positions in the face of the conflicts that threaten countries.
Think vaccines, and watch crowned heads - Pope Francis, Joe Biden, Queen Elizabeth - get injected
with Pfizer live and direct
.
A proselytism that tarnishes the spectacle of the Airline planes bringing the Russian medicine, which loses prestige and now seems like a resource for the poor.
Nobody bluffs what can be a fight between companies with high-class lobbyists, who decide under the protection of a loss: that vaccines are a hypothesis, and that they are not the solution against the universal wave of infections.
That in the VIP room they come across Pfizer's also has the
scent of brand wars
, or even subliminal retaliation.
Like the one seen by some behind the photo of Pope Bergoglio giving himself the good dose, hours before the albertista rampage to enact the law
decriminalizing abortion
.
In these terms, the vaccine plays in politics, and makes the difference between those who carry special charges and those who must resign themselves to the common.
Guzmán, advanced in the landing with Biden
The global turn enables other roles.
Martín Guzmán, the most global of officials, will be the leader in relations with the new Democratic administration in Washington.
He travels in February to sit down to talk with the IMF
, and they are setting appointments with the State Department and the Treasury.
In Peronism, contacts have historically been highly valued.
Now the minister is credited with good relations with officials in the office of
Janet Yellen
, the new Treasury chief in the Biden cabinet.
They also point out that Guzmán belongs to the papist wing of the Cabinet, which enables the use of the lane for privileged relationships between the new president and Francisco.
This explains why the minister traveled accompanied by Gustavo Béliz, strategic secretary in charge of relations with multilateral organizations.
Béliz also maintains privileged lines with the Vatican.
The direct relationship is with the sector of Bishop
Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo
, not so much with that of Bergoglio himself.
The Argentine bishop manages the Pontifical Academy of Sciences of the Vatican, and previously militated with the anti-Bergoglio sector of the Vatican court.
They are not the same and they never were, but they coexist under the protection of the Vatican times, which are different, different from those that weak mortals handle.
Biden believes he has a special relationship with the Pontiff.
They share the faith, although they disagree on issues such as abortion.
He accompanied him permanently when Bergoglio visited the United States in 2015, and they were in contact when a son of the new president died.
Biden ponders that relationship
, which was the subject of his talk with Alberto Fernández last November.
Biofuels ban, first mission
Guzmán and Béliz will have positions in the lead, for the construction of a new geopolitics that has other condiments.
Biden does not think the same as Trump about Venezuela
, and he has in the Covid a resource to rethink relations with many countries that need, like Argentina, assistance.
He also proposes a turn in the management of the economy.
With Trump ends the adherence of the world's most important capitalist power to slogans of protectionist nationalism.
It leaves room for countries like Argentina to try new ways of relating to the United States.
The governments around here have always adhered to Washington's agenda on important issues, such as security, terrorism, human rights, the Middle East, drug trafficking, money laundering, but they have taken a
specific distance in commercial tactics
or strategic positioning in the election of friends. and symbolic adversaries (Venezuela, Russia).
There are topics to review in trade relations, such as the ban on the export of biofuel, which the two governments inherit from the Trump-Macri era.
With the previous government,
Trump imposed tariffs on that product
, which made entry into that market unfeasible (150%).
Their argument is that here it is a subsidized product.
With the new government, Washington even cited, to explain the continuity of the tariffs, a document of the Instituto Patria -
think tank
of the extravagances of a sector of the ruling party - that defends the withholdings on soybeans, to integrate a fund to help the pymes.
The United States authorities saw in this document a
proof of Argentine state interventionism
.
By the time they arrive in Washington, a clearer channel between the two governments will already be in place.
Until this weekend, the Argentine Foreign Ministry had not established any contact with the new administration, except for messages from mutual friends, from local officials with agents of the Democratic family of that country.
This Peronism has to overcome the flat-earthen syndrome that implies that until now the best Argentine friend of the Bidens is “Cototo” (José Luis Manzano, Chupete detective in some environments).
The recurrence of the same Noventist names –Béliz, Cototo, Zulemita– in the Christianity agenda of the XXI century makes them think that
the earth is flat for them
.
Guzmán and Béliz are tested as candidates
Guzmán's luck is now a product in the electoral gondola, an experiment of Peronism, which does not have too many names.
They also prove it to Béliz
, to whom they have promised the leadership of the Economic and Social Council.
This offer measures the confidence that Alberto Fernández has in the Council - and also in Béliz - which is as much or more silent than Guzmán in his job as an official.
They make him appear in the new version of the Great Argentine Dilemma about the three mysteries of nature: where do the birds go to die, who gets the most beautiful girls and what does Béliz do?
Now they put him to the test with those new assignments and
the prospect of being a candidate
.
A challenge for this character, who has accompanied all Peronist administrations since 1989, except that of Cristina de Kirchner;
who is credited with having faced - on the surface - the dark world of spies;
and that he has been taking a career for 30 years to kick a penalty.
Still not getting to the ball.
Maybe it's time.
Guzmán and Béliz are running a parallel race.
Guzmán is agitated by the Government in the territories benefited in the new budget, with a significant increase in funds for public works.
That is why he gets on every plane that Wado de Pedro, owner of the strategy of building, on Guzmán's silences, a candidate that improves the electoral luck of Peronism.
This force acts as if the quality of your candidates will change your luck.
The electoral destiny of Peronism does not depend on the names they put on the lists.
Your chance is conditioned on the ability to stick together
.
If they succeed, they can sustain competitiveness at the polls.
If they are divided, they risk everything they have, as happened to them in the losses chained between 2009 and 2019.
Encounter in the frond: Larreta with Morales
The opposition has the same commitment to unity and not to fight.
In this light, we must look at the minuet of meetings and statements between leaders of Together for Change.
Carrió receives her from Patricia Bullrich, who integrates a different wing of that force and parliaments at the same hours with Miguel Pichetto.
The head of the Coalition charges, in turn, on Cristian Ritondo and the Peronist sector of Cambiemos, who surrounds Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, whom she presumes too close to Sergio Massa and Emilio Monzó.
The effort is the same as always:
that Together for Change does not end up playing inside Peronism
.
At this point, the most important thing happened, like other summer plots, in the secluded and wooded Cariló.
Larreta and Gerardo Morales met alone and for a long time to adjust relations at the top of the opposition coalition.
Mario Negri hosted the meeting, which is planning another two councils for this week.
One, from the authorities of the UCR, party and blocks, with its three governors - Morales, Rodolfo Suarez and Gustavo Valdés.
And another, to which
the caciques of the alliance
, Larreta, Carrió and Bullrich
join
.
These efforts to show themselves together surpass internal bidding, such as that of the province of Buenos Aires.
Here
Maxi Abad and Daniel Salvador compete
, ex-vidalista radicalism, with
Gustavo Posse
.
The former have the support of Carrió, who received them at his home.
Negri plays there and will be in Mar del Plata on the 30th to screen that group, in the March dispute over the leadership of the game.
Pichetto, for his part, holds Posse's chance.
This bid is more than entertaining, because everyone's destinies depend on it.
The objective is to maintain the difference in the Chamber of Deputies in 2021, so that Peronism
does not add the ten seats it needs to achieve its own quorum
.
In a preliminary balance, it is convenient for the opposition to put its best leaders in the province as candidates for deputies - a list with Carrió, Vidal and Pichetto, for example - and not waste energy in the Senate.
This is said by the expectation created by the dispute for the Córdoba benches, and the possibility that Negri will sign up.
Perhaps it will be better for him to remain a deputy than to join the Senate.
The Chinese connection, poisoned road
The construction of the new geopolitics includes the need to adapt to other debates where the Trump administration seemed dominant.
For example, relations with China
.
The Government prolongs the format of relations with that country, which comes from Cristina's previous administration, and which Macri continued.
But China wants more: for example, for Argentina to join the debate on the reform of the UN Security Council.
This discussion has been dragging on for years and seeks to renew that body, to get it out of the time tunnel: it was created in the heat of the post-war period, more than 70 years ago.
This renewal implies liquefying the veto power of the five founding countries, and
giving permanent seats to countries in underserved regions
.
Until now, Argentina has opposed Brazil's strategy of becoming a permanent member.
To uphold this position, and others, China has invited the debate to be held "against another methodology," according to the terms of a communication received in Buenos Aires as a preamble to the debate.
Argentina, like any country in permanent emergency,
believes it depends on China
and cannot generate its own agenda, something that only the strongest countries with sustainable geopolitics allow themselves.
In the last week of January, Alberto and Guzmán, among others, travel to Chile, another Sino-dependent country that acts as a link for the entry into the region of the Chinese 5G telephone system, and the terminal of the Inter Pacífico submarine cable. that Beijing wants me to pass through here and arrive in Brazil.
Transition with abuse, a la Cristina-Macri
The geopolitical transition is rehearsed in darkness.
They are brought in by the outgoing Washington administration, which ordered all Trump ambassadors to return home by Wednesday, January 20.
That
brought forward the farewell of Ambassador Edward Prado
.
If he did not do so, they would not pay for his ticket back to his country.
That is how violent is the lack of collaboration of the outgoing administration with that of Biden, a style that recalls the rigidity with which Cristina was made to Macri in 2015. Prado is on the black list of Christianity, and became an object of speeches by Oscar Parrilli, in which he speculated whether Prado had not been a member of the so-called "judicial table" of the macrismo, to which the Homeland attributes the "lawfare" against Cristina.
Felipe Solá invited him to have a coffee, a distinction that he believes the former judge of San Antonio deserved, who was one of the meekest ambassadors of his country of all time.
The dialogue remains in the privacy of the two, but surely they have speculated about the
abruptness of the order to return
, when his predecessor Noah Mamet was able to take the time necessary to order his withdrawal, when Trump assumed the presidency.
Also in Washington they sell "lawfare" jewelry
From that dialogue, surely, some coincidence arose about the respective children, who are more or less the same age.
Also about
what the end of Trump may be
after the
impeachment
, to which Congress will submit him, if it can be prolonged after he leaves office, and if the end will be his disqualification from continuing to hold office.
The two must have agreed that the Democrats will exhaust the resources of what they call "lawfare" here to get him off the field.
It is
something that Cristina fears
, if the legal cases against her prosper, some of them weak, because they are based on the presumption of an illicit association that is difficult to prove.
In others, which appear to be minor and related to family businesses, there may be a lesser penalty, but that
may entail some disqualification
.
The emphasis with which she embarks the entire government in judicial battles that interest her and her entornistas more than the party as a whole can be explained.
This emphasis is what endangers, at some point, the unity of Peronism, which since 2009 has proposed to detach itself from the individual destiny of her and her family.
In the same way as it had decided in 1999 to detach itself from the judicial destiny of Carlos Menem.
Recalculating for changes in Washington
The presidential change in Washington also accelerates positions in the Government.
Solá celebrates the result, by the end of his permanent contradictor in the Trump administration,
Mauricio Claver-Carone
.
In that meeting that Alberto had in Mexico before assuming the presidency with Eliot Abrams and Claver,
Felipe felt ignored by the organizer of the meeting
, the Argentine businessman
Gustavo Cinosi
, political advisor to the secretary of the OAS Luis Almagro.
They had not included it, but Alberto imposed it.
From the tone of the talk, Claver would say when leaving: I don't want to see Solá in Washington.
Now you will see, because Claver lost, and he has to use extreme resources so that the new US Senate does not organize an IDB assembly to remove him from office.
The Trump administration imposed it despite attempts by some countries, such as Argentina, to have the election of the new head of the bank be made after the elections.
It would be difficult for the new Senate, dominated by Democrats, to endorse the departure of Claver, an American, to be replaced by a man from another country in the region.
But
their situation is delicate
.
Cinosi acted alongside Almagro as a stoker for Claver's election, and remains identified with Trump.
Almagro will recover, with the presidency of Biden, his man scrolls from the Broad Front of Uruguay.
The american friend
Cinosi also has self defense resources.
He is a permanent character in the cast of Argentine businessmen with corporate interests in all governments.
He has a long history as a link between the State Department before the presidential area of the Casa Rosada.
In that role,
he became friends with Alberto Fernández
when he was chief of staff, because it was the way to get to Néstor Kirchner.
When Alberto left, he approached Carlos Zannini to narrow her down to Cristina.
When Mauricio Macri arrived, he spent a time in purgatory because of his K identification, but he managed to rebuild relations with that administration through the parallel chancellor who was
Fulvio Pompeo
, secretary of Strategic Affairs.
When Alberto arrived, Cinosi was in charge of organizing that meeting in Mexico.
He also mounted the Claver operation to the IDB, which counted on the recourse of Gustavo Béliz supporting his candidacy.
It served the Uruguayan to build muscle, and it was planned that Béliz, when he lost, would be called to a high position at the IDB, to broaden Almagro's political base, perhaps a vice president of the bank.
Someone will explain why Béliz got out of that fight and disrupted the unit operation
.
Perhaps the aesthetic of going to an election and appearing defeated did not match the image that Béliz wants to give to his biography as an official.
But in this diplomatic chess the one who can celebrate with reason is Solá.
Another explanation is that they foresaw Trump's defeat and have no confidence in Claver's ability to survive under another political sky.
Or Cinosi, who was the promoter of Ivanka Trump's trip to Argentina in September last year, when Macri - defeated in the PASO - was driving to death.
Donald's daughter, and wife of Jared Kushner, outgoing presidential adviser, now has a political project: to be a candidate for senator next year for the state of Florida, and will take advantage of the Cinosi connection with governments in the region, such as Mexico, that they can give you a hand.
For example, through entrepreneurs who do business in the US and who have already sponsored his father's candidacy.
