Walter schmidt
08/15/2021 18:46
Clarín.com
Opinion
Updated 08/15/2021 6:46 PM
“Mauricio Macri is a weak president, who does not manage either the Senate or the Chamber of Deputies; to expose him to an interpellation in these conditions is almost to condemn him ”
.
The reflection is from Alberto Fernández, when in 2016 he was a leader of the Renovador Front behind the leadership of Sergio Massa.
The obviousness of the paradox is that
if the name of the former president were replaced by the current one, the phrase would have the same validity.
With the scandal over the revelation of the photos in the Olivos residence, where the president celebrated Fabiola Yañez's birthday in full quarantine with guests without a mask or social distance, it is likely that Fernández has descended one more step in the lack of credibility and negative image. But the real problem for the Frente de Todos resides in that it
damages the electoral strategy
that emphasized the vaccination campaign and qualified it with economic announcements of increases in subsidies, zero-rate loans and consumer financing.
That desire of the officials closest to Alberto, that a favorable result in the legislative elections would reposition the president, relaunch his government and even give him some chance to fight for reelection in 2023, this week seemed to evaporate.
The presidential setback had such magnitude, fueled by the erroneous denial of the episode, that
Cristina Kirchner's
speech in Lomas de Zamora
, which is usually replicated and analyzed for days,
barely lasted a few hours
to get lost in the maelstrom of the Olivos gate .
Cristina Kirchner spoke at length about the responsibility of Mauricio Macri and the economic crisis.
But his exhibition was covered by the scandal in Olivos.
“He is very weakened and a scenario of defeat is going to put him in a situation of greater weakness. The photo in Olivos does more damage than any government management problem, even inflation, ”
an official reasons out loud. This reflection is central: Alberto Fernández is no longer playing a relaunch in the elections but
his political future
. In fact, in a tour of different offices of the Casa Rosada it is clear to conclude that
no one knows how much this fact will impact
on the electoral result obtained by the ruling party.
Hence the transversal anger in the Front of All. Few come out in defense of the President. The one who did come out in his support was
La Cámpora
, not because he endorsed his actions and his management but because they feel part of the government. Illustrated with a photo of the then president Macri, with his officials and the former director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, published on his Twitter account, “with half of the media outrage of these days applied to other photos we would have saved ourselves the debt of the next decades ”.
"The only ones who put the body are us, because our own, friends ... ..with all the differences, we are a very important part of this government. So we will continue with Sergio giving him the body and the substance that he does not have ”
, a camper transmits.
In his words, it reflects the consolidation of the alliance with Sergio Massa.
The head of the Renewing Front preferred silence, but in his surroundings they thought that
"you have to grit your teeth and push."
The ruling party had already been perceiving that the arrival of more vaccines would not be enough to win the election, especially in the midst of an economic crisis.
That is why Cristina Kirchner came out to raise the discussion, but with
another axis: Macri is to blame for everything that happens today.
“They dedicated themselves to building a new story: that the problems facing the economy are the fault of the quarantine, not the pandemic. With a formidable media machine that I know because we suffer it firsthand, ”he said in a lengthy economic speech. The vice president is surely
not unaware
that during her administration and that of Alberto, poverty increased by 30% - from 35 to 42% - and that inflation between July 2020 and July 2021 soared to 51.8%, a very high figure. close to 54% of Macri in 2019.
Clearly
the official story that the economy fell due to the pandemic disappears with the data from Chile
.
Between June 2020 and June 2021, in the midst of a pandemic, its economy grew by 20.1%.
And it should be added that he did so despite a political context that exploded with social protests, Sebastián Piñera's stumble in the municipal elections and an also adverse plebiscite that will put the writing of a new Constitution in the hands of independents and the left.
Cristina is aware, like Minister Martín Guzmán, that blaming everything on Macri and the pandemic is not enough to re-float a country immersed in an economic crisis, with high levels of poverty, inflation, unemployment and no dollars.
The Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, does not know what political direction the Government will take after the elections.
Photo: - / Economy Ministry via telam / dpa
In the Palacio de Hacienda he replies by way of questioning what will happen after November 14, the date of the legislative elections.
They know that removing Guzmán before an agreement with the IMF would be a terrible signal to the world.
The Minister of Economy has become a kind of last link of albertism in the Casa Rosada.
"There are already some indicators of a positive trend, but the big question is
whether they will continue to bank more budget for social plans or will bet on production,
"
says an official.
It so happens that Guzmán has no doubts that the problems are in the export matrix and that consumption is fine as a starter but if it is not accompanied with productive capacity it is more of the same.
The uncertainty about what will happen in the next two years of the Alberto Fernández government is not resolved in December 2023. Many companies urgently require predictability.
As in the home appliance sector that is governed by the industrial sub-regime, tied to law 19,640 that establishes a special customs area in Tierra del Fuego - it allows electrical appliances and electronics to be assembled and produced - and that
expires in December 2023
. For the government, there is a lot to do, but companies need to plan because, for example, if they don't order LCD screens that are only manufactured in the Asian giant from China three years before, they won't get it. Or as one of the firms, which needs to know whether or not to buy a boat, to start paying for it now.
It is also a concern for
the Fuegian governor, Gustavo Melella
.
In his province there are 200 thousand inhabitants of which 8,800 work in the customs area and there are 7 thousand indirect jobs.
Multiplied by family, almost half of the population lives from this activity.
"If you do not have certainty about the two years of your government that are missing, because your image is on the floor and you have no power, how can you give certainty to the other,"
reasons a disgruntled Peronist about the blurred panorama.
In other words,
the image of the finitude of a political leader, tied to an electoral result.