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Cristina Kirchner and a fierce turn to the right

2021-09-30T02:48:05.360Z


Cristina Kirchner is at a great crossroads, win or lose the November elections. Only the distribution of refrigerators is remaining from the progressive story. It is the nightmare of a populism without money


President Alberto Fernández embraces his new chief of staff, Juan Manzur, at the Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires on September 20. JUAN MABROMATA / AFP

Anything can be said about the defeat suffered by the ruling party in the legislative primaries that were held in Argentina last Sunday the 12th, unless it was not predictable. For months opinion polls reported that 70% of voters believed that this year was worse than last and that next year will be worse than this. It is difficult to find another moment of such pessimism in recent history. In the statistical series, the citizen trust indices in which they rule coincide with those of defeated governments. The same happens with the almost infallible correlation between the purchasing power of wages and the consensus that the administration achieves at the polls. According to international comparisons, such as those presented by the Bloomberg ranking,Argentina was the worst country in the health and economic management of the Covid 19 pandemic. The combination of all the indicators anticipated that a victory for President Alberto Fernández and his tutor, Vice President Cristina Kirchner, would have been a black swan.

Argentina

  • A week of vertigo for Argentine Peronism to recover votes

  • The defeat of Peronism in the primaries opens two months of political uncertainty in Argentina

  • Alberto Fernández gives in to the pressure of Cristina Kirchner and changes six ministers of his cabinet

That the opposition of Together for Change, the coalition that governed for four years with Mauricio Macri and was defeated in 2019, has obtained more votes, was an earthquake for the Frente de Todos.

The consequences are noticed as the days go by.

The most notorious has been an unhinged initial reaction on the part of the leaders.

Cristina Kirchner negotiated a cabinet change with the president. As Fernández was slow to comply with the replacements, she ordered almost all the officials who respond to her to offer their resignations through the press. In case that scandal was not enough, he wrote an open letter explaining that the defeat had occurred for two main reasons. The stubbornness of the president in not renewing his team before the elections and the resistance of the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, to increasing the fiscal deficit to stark levels. The deeds and words that followed the defeat have been, for the vice president and her followers, even more damaging than the defeat itself.

The scandal ended in a cabinet change that expresses, in itself, a reconfiguration of the entire ruling party. Cristina Kirchner herself revealed in that letter that she imposed Fernández on Juan Manzur as the new Chief of Staff. The former, Santiago Cafiero, expelled for incompetent, was assigned, as a consolation prize, nothing less than the Ministry of Foreign Relations.

Manzur had been serving as governor of the province of Tucumán, a position for which he requested a license. His presence in the national cabinet introduces at least two novelties. It is a step towards the center of the scene of a Peronism rooted in the interior of the country, which had not been considered until now in decision-making. Cristina Kirchner managed power through her ward, Fernández, focusing only on the so-called metropolitan area of ​​the country. That is to say, the Federal Capital and its populous and impoverished suburb, which extends over the province of Buenos Aires.

Manzur also means a violent turn to the right. A president like Fernández, who bragged about his progressive agenda, for example, by pushing for the legalization of abortion, now has an orthodox Maronite Christian as his “intervener”, accused in his province of protecting those who prevented the abortion of a woman. 11-year-old girl raped by her grandfather. Or to protect reluctant judges to condemn flagrant cases of femicides. Kirchnerism, which followed a friendly foreign policy with the Bolivarian League of Latin America, that is, with Cuban Castroism, the Chavistas of Venezuela, the Bolivia of Evo Morales or the Ecuador of Rafael Correa, must resign itself to an operational chief like Manzur , very close to Luis Almagro, the Secretary General of the OAS, who is going in the opposite direction,much more familiar to the positions of the Republican Party of the United States. The criticisms of Cristina Kirchner and her followers towards Macri for his good relations with the business community, are now invalidated in front of a Chief of Staff who has functioned as the political partner of a league of businessmen that do business with the State, and that range from the pharmaceutical industry to the banking of the provinces, passing through the insurance companies. Manzur himself, who comes from a humble family and has done almost nothing in his life other than exercise public function, is the holder of a fortune as incalculable as it is inexplicable.They are now invalidated in the face of a Chief of Staff who has functioned as the political partner of a league of businessmen who do business with the State, ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to banking in the provinces, passing through the insurance companies. Manzur himself, who comes from a humble family and has done almost nothing in his life other than exercise public function, is the holder of a fortune as incalculable as it is inexplicable.They are now invalidated in the face of a Chief of Staff who has functioned as the political partner of a league of businessmen who do business with the State, ranging from the pharmaceutical industry to banking in the provinces, passing through the insurance companies. Manzur himself, who comes from a humble family and has done almost nothing in his life other than exercise public function, is the holder of a fortune as incalculable as it is inexplicable.

The change of course in the national government is reproduced in the main Kirchner district: the province of Buenos Aires. There governs one of the vice president's favorite apostles, Axel Kicillof, a state-centric economist whose heterodoxy borders on Marxism. He was also intervened. Cristina Kirchner appointed the mayor of Lomas de Zamora, a town in the impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires, as provincial chief of Cabinet. He is Martín Insaurralde, a Peronist caudillejo who made his career linked to the gambling business.

Manzur and Insaurralde have, in the nation and in the main province of the country, a single mission: to reverse the results of the primaries in the general elections of November 14. Whatever. Also with fraud? This is what the opposition fears, which six years ago denounced Manzur for having won the governorship of Tucumán by manipulating the vote count.

Kirchnerism relaunched its campaign with this new direction. Proselytism has two axes. One is to identify those who have received some social assistance and did not go to vote, so that the next time they will not be absent. The other is to distribute material benefits. Argentina is attending a public spending festival today. The government gives away bicycles, refrigerators, stoves, food or, more conveniently, gives out cash, as in the province of Manzur. In addition, measures are provided to improve income: increases in subsidies, pensions, public sector salaries or a reduction in the minimums from which taxes are paid.

It is difficult to know if with these initiatives Cristina Kirchner will be able to reverse her defeat. What is certain is that its campaign strategy will aggravate a fiscal imbalance that already presents disturbing magnitudes and that is largely financed with monetary issuance. These are deformations that will be seen more clearly after the elections, when the Government must negotiate a program with the International Monetary Fund. Everything that brings Peronism closer to recovering votes takes it away from that agreement with the Fund. In other words: the levels of fiscal and monetary expansion to which proselytism leads are in direct proportion to the adjustment that should be made to agree with that multilateral body. To understand the drama of the situation, it must be remembered that the country was in debt with the Fund for 57,000 million dollars:the largest loan granted by that institution in its entire history. Argentina is not in a position to pay off this commitment without renegotiating the maturities. And it is impossible to renegotiate those maturities without an adjustment program.

Cristina Kirchner is at a great crossroads, win or lose the November elections.

He has already changed the course of his policy by forcing the Fernández government to submit to a right-wing manager.

Then you must decide whether to complete that maneuver by accepting painful financial restrictions.

From the

progressive

and distributionist

story,

only the distribution of refrigerators is remaining.

It is the nightmare of populism without money.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2021-09-30

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