Guido Carelli Lynch
06/18/2021 7:22 PM
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 06/18/2021 7:33 PM
Once again, the desolation of downtown Buenos Aires, deserted by the pandemic and the crisis, was interrupted with a
massive demonstration
of left-wing social organizations and opposition groups grouped in the
Piquetero Unity Front
that marched to the Ministry of Social Development to demand an urgent meeting with Daniel Arroyo. With aftershocks in
several provinces
, hundreds of columns of militants who cut off traffic, accesses and scheduled cuts, it was one of the
main protests against
the
Alberto Fernández
administration
in his 18 months in office. They demand food disbursements for the canteens, the return of the IFE and the expansion of employment plans.
The name of
Pablo Pais's position
is eloquent: director of urgent aid.
He is a permanent interlocutor with social organizations and was the official who sought until the last minute to defuse the protests.
Pais, a militant from San Fernando, informed organizations of the timetable for the shipment of the food bags that "the orgasms" claim for the thousands of community kitchens that they manage.
The official's efforts were in vain.
On May 12,
Arroyo had managed
to get the piquetero front to lift the protest that it carried out this Friday. He backed down with the loss of beneficiaries of the Empower Work, joined others and promised that he would advocate for the vaccination of the workers in the canteens. In between, the Government disbursed
$ 36 billion
to expand the coverage and amounts of the food card program. On Thursday, it announced the payment of a
$ 6,000 bonus
for the million beneficiaries of the complementary social salary ($ 12,204).
During his first year and a half in charge of the Executive, the President doubled the employment plans.
On December 10, 2019, there were about
570 thousand beneficiaries
;
today there are more than a million.
In the middle of the crisis came the pandemic.
The IFE arrived with the first wave and left with the second.
The
protests are on the rise
.
The Polo Obrero has already announced that if the Government does not attend to them, they will make a camp next week.
March of social organizations on Avenida 9 de Julio.
Photo: Julian Mayer
The organizations affirm that
Arroyo
, one of the many who sounds like a
candidate for the ruling party
in the Province, did not keep his word. They ask for solutions, because they consider that
social aid is insufficient
with current poverty levels and while the Executive reaps a sustained increase in collection. "
We want the IFE to return
. They charged nine million people and the Empower Work only a million. It is treacherous, things only move when we mobilize," says Silvia Saravia, from Barrios de Pie-Libres del Sur, the organization that has just joined the electoral assembly of
Florencio Randazzo,
a detail that they indicate in official dispatches.
Arroyo did not receive the leaders
of the groups who demanded a meeting. In the Government they show their social assistance numbers and argue that leftist organizations seek to dispute the visibility among themselves (which
multiplies the marches
) and in the face of their respective electoral bets. They also stressed that the
mobilization was excessive
in the middle of the second wave of infections, on a cold day, and a month after the minister received them.
The referents of the opposition organizations assure that in hundreds of dining rooms only half of the deliveries of promised food bags arrived. "The increases in the
food card go to the popular pots
," insists Saravia. Eduardo Belliboni, from the Polo Obrero, denounced threats to his militants in La Matanza.
The organizations that mobilized targeted the Social Economy Secretary
Emilio Pérsico
, leader of Evita, because they assure that it benefits with deliveries, the registration of plans and direct aid to the social organizations that are in the Government. The same is said of the secretary of Social Inclusion Laura Alonso, from La Cámpora. The Peronist mayor of Esteban Echeverría
Fernando Gray
, confronted with
Máximo Kirchner's
organization
, also denounced that they
discriminated against his municipality
in the delivery of food.
With the approach of the campaign, the social movements of the ruling party decided to
suspend their public questions
to the Executive, after
criticizing the Alimentar Card
and the
delays in the vaccination
of the workers in the canteens.
Officials from four national ministries (Security, Interior, Social Development and Labor)
monitor social unrest
throughout the country.
For this, a work table was formalized, supervised by the Chief of Staff.
The protests threaten to become another actor in the electoral race.
