Walter schmidt
06/20/2021 7:21 PM
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 06/20/2021 7:21 PM
"I prefer to have 10 percent more poor and not 100,000 deaths in Argentina from coronavirus
.
"
The phrase corresponds to President Alberto Fernández, and it is from April 2020. When the current president took office, the poor rate was 35.5% and although he closed 2020 with 42%, different projections mark 45.2 % today.
That is, almost 10 percent.
Regarding the number of deaths from Covid, Argentina borders 90 thousand and, unfortunately, it sounds inevitable that it will exceed 100 thousand.
In other words, what Fernández preferred is already an anecdote: he
has 10% more poor people and soon the death toll will reach 100,000.
Does that indicate that health management is a failure?
The only certainty is that
if Argentina was ranked eighth in the world of the countries with the most infections since this weekend
- for every one hundred thousand inhabitants -, surpassing even Italy, that is to say that something was done wrong.
Denying it is, in the fashionable term, denialist.
The best news for the Casa Rosada is that winter is coming, which begins this Tuesday, with
more than 20 million doses
, which are far from the 63 million promised by the former Minister of Health Ginés González García, on a leisure trip to Spain. It also faces this stage with
90% of those over 60 years of age
with at least one vaccine applied. But the lack of the second dose of Sputnik V is beginning to worry those who were inoculated with the first of that vaccine, especially the elderly. And there are no signs yet of when it will arrive. If the 85-day immunity period for dose 1 expires, there will be many who will point to the government.
A row of elderly adults to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at the Tecnopolis Premises, in the Province of Buenos Aires.
Photo: EFE / Juan Ignacio Roncoroni
The government and the Frente de Todos cling to the premise of accelerating vaccination to face the start of the electoral campaign with a view to the STEP in September and the legislative elections in November.
At this point, there is no doubt that the axis of the dispute at the political level and what the voter will privilege will be:
vaccination or the economy?
Cristina Kirchner, the leader of the ruling party, made it clear that
the only thing that Alberto Fernández's management has to show is the vaccination campaign
. That is why he appealed to the false convocation of the unit, to shield the beam that supports the electoral strategy, the vaccines. The vice president said nothing, because perhaps there was nothing to say about a promising immediate future at an economic level. It would have been very little credible in a context where, in addition to poverty, it
is only five points away from affecting half the population
, and in which nobody imagines an annual inflation of less than 45%, with the corresponding loss of the purchasing power of wages. .
For the salary to beat inflation during Fernández's administration, a worker must have seen his income increase by at least 36% in 2020, and have closed as a floor 45% for this year. That would mean tying it for inflation. So it would be necessary to add a few more points, to win. How many guilds managed to cover that increase? In addition, it should not be forgotten that almost 50% of the workers are informal or self-employed, which is why they are left out of these increases.
This was the reason why the Ministry of Economy and the AFIP
took three months
to regulate the modification of the income tax that benefits more than 1,200,000 people. They wanted to design a package that also included the return of what that band - those who earn $ 124,500 or less - paid between January and June; the bonus; the bonus for retirees and pensioners; and an increase in social assistance. The
"June effect": more vaccines and more money in the pockets.
The dilemma is whether these resources, no longer in the lower class but in the battered middle class, will
be transferred to consumption or to pay debts
with public services, the credit card or with the credits - not subsidies - granted at a zero rate by the Condition. Situation that is very present in the X-ray of this social segment marked by the closure of businesses and SMEs, layoffs, entrepreneurs without income, unemployment. The new poor who started to swell that index that nobody seems to reveal too much.
For now,
there is no economic plan
, as suggested by the US State Department when it called for "a solid economic policy framework," implying that it does not exist today.
Hence the response of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Cecilia Todesca, who pointed out that the government's plan was always the same, production, stimulation of exports, import substitution and employment.
The problem is that none of these four points is achieved by the economic management
headed by Martín Guzmán and in which Axel Kicillof influences, from the shadows.
It is not by chance that the economist Carlos Melconián affirms, as he did a few days ago to
Clarín,
that
"the next elections are the most important since the return to democracy."
The Together for Change table.
The government is betting on vaccination, with some economic patches.
And the opposition?
For now, neither option.
If not a third party,
which very few people care about
, which is the fight for the candidacies.
The current situation of Together for Change triggers
the memory of 2009
. The opposition had defeated Kirchnerism in the legislative elections, and then all the sectors facing the government -Elisa Carrió, Ricardo Alfonsín, Julio Cobos, Mauricio Macri, Francisco de Narváez, Felipe Solá, etc.- formed the so-called group A that had a loose majority in the Chamber of Deputies; in the Senate, half the ruling party and the other half the opposition were divided. Such was the
war of egos
and cartel differences between the leaders that collectively they did not achieve anything.
The few decisions that the JxC national board makes today other than collective leadership seem to profess internalism.
One issue is the political construction based on negotiation and settling disagreements and even going to the STEP strategically to give more volume to a speech;
and it is quite another to
use the primaries because it is impossible to reach a consensus.
In return, the main scourge of society together with the pandemic is the economy, however little and nothing transmits the opposition arc.
In other words, what are the opposition's proposals to get out of the economic crisis generated by the pandemic and by the government's negligence in the face of inflation?
Nobody knows.
Mauricio Macri apologizes for the error of comparing Covid with a flu, in addition to having to permanently clarify the economic failure of his management; Horacio Rodríguez Larreta focuses on Patricia Bullrich not using the City as a presidential springboard, as - using a soccer example - a DT who seeks that the fixture favors his team and thus avoid some rivals when in truth whoever wants to win the championship must beat everyone and trust their conditions more; Elisa Carrió denounces the whims of the Macri-Patricia Bullrich tandem and criticizes personal ambitions; Bullrich accuses María Eugenia Vidal of detaching herself from Macri's own government and of speculating about going in the City and not in the Province; Vidal bets on silence but instead advances his presidential ambition;and the radical Gerardo Morales ironizes with the novel of the PRO. And the people?
An important segment of society is made up of those who are
"disenchanted"
with the majority options on the table, that is, the Front of All and Together for Change; and by
young people enrolled in
political and social
causes
but far removed from the traditional political class that is on another plane. Why shouldn't they be?
In the legislative elections of October 2001, during the final stretch of Fernando de la Rúa's government, the furor was
the angry vote
, made up of a blank vote, annulment of the vote by putting anything in the envelope, or absence. To the point that in Santa Fe blank and invalid votes exceeded 40 percent; in the province of Buenos Aires they totaled just over a million and a half; and in the City of Buenos Aires they were in the order of 30 percent.
There is no doubt that the context is not the same, Alberto Fernández is not De la Rúa and in the middle, in addition, there is the pandemic. But it is clear that
there is significant underground discontent with the political class
. And that the representativeness of the parties, the unions and the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches
is in crisis
. It is not a journalistic statement, it is claimed by a good part of society daily on social networks and in everyday life. Will someone be listening to them?