Walter Schmidt
03/24/2021 7:55 PM
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 03/24/2021 7:55 PM
In politics, and particularly in the management of a government,
timing is extremely important
.
The same decision can have different effects depending on when and how it is carried out.
That the government of Alberto Fernández has decided to leave the Lima Group, created to support the democratic normalization of a Venezuela that barely survives under the regime of Nicolás Maduro, almost
simultaneously with a new speech by
Cristina Kirchner in which she makes it clear that Argentina does not accept the conditions posed by the IMF to agree on a program, it not only
hinders the relationship
with the administration of Democrat Joe Biden.
It also obstructs the limited resources left to the Minister of the Economy
, Martín Guzmán, to agree on a sustainable program with the IMF.
In her message that is addressed to the director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva and Biden, Cristina Kirchner made it clear that the terms and rates that the IMF intends are "unacceptable", and that "cannot" be paid.
A lead lifeline for the Minister of the Economy.
The vice president appears to have
unknown details
of the two-hour meeting that Guzmán held with the head of the Fund on Tuesday.
Long before leaving for Washington to meet with Georgieva, the outlook had ceased to be what Guzmán had imagined for 2021 with a sharp cut in the fiscal deficit from a reduction in subsidies, with increases in utility rates and savings. in pension expenses.
The "gestures" of the Palacio de Hacienda directed at the Biden government and the Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen, vanished under pressure from the Instituto Patria that put a stop to everything and made it subject to the electoral strategy: an agreement after the elections of October to be able to recreate a fantasy of “a country standing up”.
The same strategy that Cristina used in her government at the hand of the then Minister of Economy, Axel Kicillof, that of
postponing everything irresponsibly.
In those gestures by Guzmán there was not only Alberto F.'s interest in strengthening ties with Biden, but also because the US has a key seat on the IMF staff that ends up tipping the balance in favor of whoever the White House decides.
But
the "dream" that Biden is to Alberto, what Donald Trump was to Mauricio Macri, evaporates.
Two months ago, Fernández sent a letter to Biden for his inauguration in which he affirmed that his government was
“ready and hopeful to be able to cement” with the United States “a work agenda”, “nourished by common values
.” “His experience and sensitivity will also be very important for our region besieged by multiple challenges of inequity, violence and unsustainable debt, "he added.
However, the departure of the Lima Group denotes that
today the values that Argentina and the United States proclaim are not "common" but very different
.
The Maduro regime in Venezuela has been repeatedly denounced for violation of human rights by the former Chilean president and socialist leader Michelle Bachelet, today the UN High Commissioner.
Just two weeks ago, Biden extended the validity of the decree - issued by Barack Obama in December 2015 - declaring Venezuela an "unusual and extraordinary threat"
to the security of his country.
Political paradoxes, this position of the United States regarding Venezuela originated a harsh criticism from the then president Cristina Kirchner to Obama at the VII Summit of the Americas in Panama.
There, he called the US attitude "bordering on the ridiculous", said it was "absurd and unreasonable" and even slipped the responsibility of Obama in alleged attempts of a "soft coup" against it.
Barack Obama and Cristina Kirchner, at the UN General Assembly in 2014, when the bilateral relationship had already deteriorated.
Photo: Spencer Platt / Getty Images / AFP
For this reason, and no other, official sources confirmed to Clarín that
the Argentine Foreign Ministry received a call from Washington
.
An official from the North American State Department wanted to know unofficially the reasons for Argentina's departure from the Lima Group.
In diplomatic language, that means a
counterpoint
.
From the Palacio San Martín they responded that
"there is nothing new in our position before the government of Venezuela."
“We were never in the Lima Group at the meetings and neither did we accompany a single statement. And we thought against it when we could ”, they
highlighted near Felipe Sola.
They maintain that there is coherence in that position, because they always voted in favor of the Bachelet reports that condemned Venezuela.
"We have only one stick in that sense and we are not going to change it," they
claim.
What will the Secretary of the State Department, Antony Blinken or Biden himself think about Argentina's decision? Surely the ambassador in Washington
Jorge Argüello
has made endless efforts to test an explanation about the turnaround in foreign policy proposed two months ago by Alberto Fernández to Biden himself.
It is difficult to justify the high similarity that this position has with that of Cristina Kirchner when she was president
. It would be necessary to begin to explain to the democratic administration the meaning of “christinization of the Argentine government”.