Rupture in the Government?
The analysis of Marcelo Longobardi 8:06
Editor's Note:
Marcelo Longobardi is a long-time Argentine journalist and host of CNN en Español's Sunday talk show "In Dialogue with Longobardi."
He is currently the main presenter of "Cada Mañana" on Radio Miter.
(CNN in Spanish) -
We are experiencing a political crisis of colossal proportions.
The tensions within the government coalition, and particularly between President Alberto Fernández and his Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, are not new.
Moreover, they are in the genesis of the construction of that coalition, being that Kirchner herself is the one that could be considered to have made Alberto Fernández president and who now does not obey his proposals.
There is a specific tension, but that tension between the two is in the genesis of this governing coalition.
There have also been innumerable very visible gestures by Kirchner in recent times, some of rudeness towards the president.
Especially since December of last year, when the Argentine vice president said in a speech: "That is why I tell everyone, all those who are afraid or who are not encouraged, please, there are other occupations besides being a minister or minister , legislator or legislator, go find another job ".
Elections in Argentina: the government suffers a hard setback in the primaries
In this case, we are seeing that, as a consequence of the most important electoral defeat in the history of unified Peronism, this situation, which Kirchner underlines in his recent letter, of the catastrophic results of the election, is the one that finally completely reveals the level and magnitude of this crisis, which obviously reminds us of the events prior to the 2001 crisis in Argentina, which led to the resignation of then-President Fernando De la Rúa.
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The PRO's position on the crisis in the Government 1:31
How is that crisis like this crisis?
In these days there were three visible gestures of proposals for President Fernández to renew his cabinet or part of it.
First, Santa Cruz province governor Alicia Kirchner, vice president Kirchner's sister-in-law, fired her entire cabinet after losing elections in the province on Sunday, as a kind of first warning.
It was also well remembered that in 2009 and 2013 Kirchner did the same when his party lost the mid-term legislative elections: he renewed his cabinet.
Second, the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, asked his entire cabinet to resign, although he did not accept it later.
I mean, a bit of a funny thing, but it was a second gesture.
Cristina Kirchner dedicates a hard letter to Fernández 4:16
And, of course, the resignation of the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, this Thursday, as well as a large part of President Alberto Fernández's cabinet, which made it very clear the magnitude of Cristina Kirchner's proposal - and that now makes public - regarding cabinet renewal.
Now, nobody imagined that President Fernández would present any resistance to these demands, to the point that this resistance led to two events much more serious than those I have just listed: the first and most serious of all is this private audio that It transcended from the deputy Fernanda Vallejos, where he calls the president "squat".
In Argentina, someone who occupies something that does not belong to him is called a "squatter".
A viral audio shows the internal conflict in the government of Alberto Fernández in Argentina after defeat in the primaries
In addition, there are a series of very significant insults to the president and his team and she clearly states that Kirchner is the owner of power, she is the one who represents the entire Argentine people and that, therefore, the president must comply with the provisions by Cristina Kirchner when we have the information.
Audio: Kirchnerist deputy attacks Alberto Fernández 1:58
And this letter from Cristina Kirchner seems much more "grandiose", if there is a word, than the statements to Congresswoman Vallejos, which were brutal, which are what make the magnitude of this crisis that the Argentine government is experiencing very much in evidence.
The president now has, I suppose, two alternatives: first, to accept in a more or less elegant way the proposals of Kirchner and the dominant sector of the coalition that supports the Government. It seems difficult for Fernández to do that because there would be nothing left of him. That is, a leader defeated in the elections, a highly criticized management and above all leveled at the proposals of his vice president. It would be practically impossible to sustain, who knows if for more than two weeks.
And the second alternative, which is to accept this fracture and rule alone. Now, this presents a problem: he is two years away from his mandate in the context of a very serious crisis. To this we add a paradox, which is that President Fernández, as long as he does not subordinate himself to Kirchner and defend what little autonomy he has left, is at the same time defending a cabinet that does not work. Because, of course, Cristina Kirchner intends, I imagine, to radicalize the cabinet. Now Fernández, as long as he does not radicalize him and does not accept Cristina Kirchner's claim, is holding a cabinet in which no one trusts, which is broken on all sides.
Argentina is on the edge of the abyss. One could imagine an airplane, for example, in a dramatic storm, with the pilot, copilot, and crew bumping into the middle of the storm. That is quite an explicit image so that the audience of the entire region can understand the nature of the problem. And this in Argentina, generally, ends very badly.