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From the political crisis to the institutional crisis?

2021-09-16T02:05:31.755Z


Agustín Rossi, who was defeated in Santa Fe, would be Pedro's replacement for Wado as Interior Minister. Cristina Kirchner retired to preserve her strength because she warns that the time to come will only cause disappointment.


09/15/2021 10:49 PM

  • Clarín.com

  • Opinion

Updated 09/15/2021 10:49 PM

The slam of Cristina Kirchner withdrawing her ministers from her ally?

Alberto Fernández

has added drama to the already delicate situation in which the government was left,

after the unexpected and overwhelming electoral defeat on Sunday.

Today is a political crisis that can turn into an institutional crisis. Alberto Fernández decided to reject the vice president's ultimatum and not give in to pressure to remove Santiago Cafiero from the Chief of Cabinet and Martín Guzmán, from Economy.

The meeting on Tuesday night in Olivos de Fernández with Cristina did not produce agreements.

From there the succession of events was triggered that determined that Alberto, last night, was surrounded by a handful of loyalists and governors, with the determination to continue to maintain that there will only be changes after November.

What is under discussion today at the top of the cracked pro-government front is

who

is

in charge of the government

. This arm wrestling has been delayed since Cristina chose Alberto in a tactical maneuver that allowed her to recover the Casa Rosada. But the assembly of this anomalous political artifact - the vice president with greater power than the president - has its complexities and dangers if it is to be awkwardly disarmed.

Fernández has a far greater institutional weight than his now diminished political base.

That weight is what gives him power against any maneuver that tends to ignore it.

To put it in dramatic terms: forcing his resignation implies an institutional trauma that, moreover, would force Cristina Kirchner to assume in the midst of this crisis and the economic swamp in which Argentina is buried.

Faced with the

extortion of Kirchnerism

to intervene the government, Fernández always has this brave card to play.

Despite the decline of the country,

there has not been a crisis of this magnitude since 2001.

The explanation that this arm wrestling is resolved by butcher blows is because Cristina - and perhaps Alberto - never envisaged a mechanism to settle controversies,

accustomed as she is to command without objections.

Fernández ratified Guzmán, to whom he gave the floor in an act and, in turn, the President revealed that the Budget that is being presented in Congress is made discounting an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Kirchnerism trilled.

Then, the cascade of resignations began, starting with that of the Minister of the Interior, Wado de Pedro, who announced it with a formal statement.

The other resignations, they say in the Casa Rosada, were announced in the media but not yet formalized.

They do not yet take them into account.

That De Pedro was the first is symbolic.

He is one of the heads of La Cámpora and a privileged interlocutor for Cristina Kirchner.

I would already have a replacement.

It could be Agustín Rossi, defeated in the internal Santa Fe, who would return to the Cabinet after that political frustration.

Is the withdrawal of Kirchnerism just a push to force changes or a more serious decision to withdraw from the Government?

Alberto Fernández gets on the presidential helicopter to go from Casa Rosada to Quinta de Olivos, this Wednesday night.

Photo Emmanuel Fernández

There is an interesting piece of information: neither the AFI intervener, the spy agency, Graciela Camaño nor the second Justice, Juan Martín Mena, both aligned with the harshest Kirchnerism, have revealed what attitude they will adopt in this crisis. These are two very important pieces in Kirchnerism's power scheme:

intelligence and judicial information management

, two fronts that for Cristina are fundamental due to her personal situation.

Those who think that it is only a pressure maneuver believe that this emptying of the Cabinet is temporary.

Sooner rather than later, they speculate, there will be a truce and a precarious agreement will emerge from that truce until the November result is known.

However, this hypothetical agreement should show that the Government has not been intervened by Kirchnerism.

That is,

a Chief of Staff who guarantees efficiency but who is chosen by the President and has not been imposed on him.

The same with the Minister of Economy.

Those who know the interlinings of politics insist that this would have been possible if the main actors acted with

rationality

after the electoral palace.

It is seen that this did not occur.

The tremendous bet K to

empty the Government

was anticipated by Kicillof, demanding that his ministers resign.

The Buenos Aires governor acted in anticipation of the national ministers, who waited for the President to present the energy law, again showing his synchronicity with the Instituto Patria.

This move by Kicillof, which would have been criticized by Máximo Kirchner in a meeting with mayors, exhibited the force of the impact of Sunday's ballot on the Buenos Aires administration.

If Cristina called for withdrawal, as is also analyzed, it is because the vice president would be convinced that

the bitter time to come can only bring disappointment.

The preservation of its strength, always according to this speculation, would be thinking about a future that goes beyond 2023.

He has been quick to compare this situation with the resignation of Carlos Chacho Alvarez in 2000. The then vice president and leader of Frepaso resigned as vice president of Fernando de la Rúa because he did not want to be tainted by an alleged act of corruption in the Senate.

Alvarez's gesture, whatever its historical weighting, hit the Alianza government hard, but Chacho did not then order the ministers and officials of his faction to leave the government.

Several of those officials, who continued with De la Rúa, are today followers of Cristina.

The formal argument of the current resigners is that they leave the hands of the President free so that he can renew ministers and, above all, his politics.

His proposal is that the Government has failed to comply with the objective of "improving the lives of the people" because it tried to balance between social needs and that of the "powers that be".

They propose, then, a

radicalization

for a better distribution of income, raising more taxes and giving increases by decree that exceed inflation.

Some members of the Frente de Todos propose

the issuance of a quasi currency to distribute to the poorest sectors.

Thus, they believe that the results of the elections can be reversed.

The massive vote against the Government was a rejection of the management of Fernández and Cristina.

Society seems more inclined to

moderate proposals that mark a horizon

in the midst of this uncertainty.

The opposition, meanwhile, continues to campaign while observing the outcome of this final bid for power in the ruling party.

Look also

Hot versus lukewarm and a melee for power

Damn STEP: the illusory fiction of unity

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2021-09-16

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