The social work of the picketers in Argentina 4:07
(CNN Spanish) --
The situation within the Government of Argentina remains tense since the 2021 electoral defeat, while inflation and social unrest grow.
The intention to resign from some Kirchnerist ministers, the critical letters from Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to President Alberto Fernández, a reformed cabinet, the refinancing of the IMF loan, the uncertainty of the official alliance and the protests put the Government at a difficult that reveals a division alien to the image with which the administration came to power in 2019.
This is how the current government came to the Executive
In a decision that puzzled many and generated praise from others, the former president of Argentina (2007-2015) Cristina Fernández de Kirchner declined to stand again as a candidate in 2019, when the then government of Mauricio Macri (Together for Change) was in serious difficulties.
Instead, he chose Alberto Fernández, a former collaborator —he was chief of staff in the Néstor Kirchner government (2003-2007) and then in the first year of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's mandate— who in recent years had become critical of her management, so that she would lead the formula for the Front of All, in which she herself would be a candidate for vice-president.
Fernandez vs.
Fernandez?
Agreements and differences between the president and vice president of Argentina
"I have asked Alberto Fernández to lead the formula that we will integrate together, him as a candidate for president and I as a candidate for vice. To participate in the next primary, open, simultaneous and mandatory elections," he said in a video posted on social networks. .
The Fernández-Fernández ticket triumphed in those elections and the former president's decision was celebrated as a master move.
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Almost three years later, few would dare to describe it that way.
Learn why farmers protest in Argentina 2:04
Hit by the covid-19 pandemic and the restrictions imposed to contain it, which plunged an economy that was already in recession during the previous administration, and under constant pressure from the loan granted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the previous Government of Macri, President Alberto Fernández saw his popularity fall day by day, while inflation rose and poverty remained high.
According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), poverty was located in the second half of 2021 at 37.3% of the population, with 7% unemployment in the fourth quarter of 2021. The numbers they represent an improvement over 2020, when the effects of the covid-19 pandemic were most felt, but remain high.
But inflation, on the other hand, continued to grow: in March it was 6.7%, the highest since 2002.
In the mid-term elections of 2021, the Argentine government received a jolt at the polls: one of the worst defeats of Peronism in living memory, and the rebirth of the opposition grouped in Together for Change, which until then had not he was recovering from his own mistakes during the Macri government.
The electoral defeat exacerbated differences between Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a leftist leader who maintained good relations with Hugo Chávez, Rafael Correa and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and Alberto Fernández, seen as a more moderate figure.
What is Argentina doing to curb inflation?
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The tension within the Government of Argentina
A group of ministers loyal to Fernández de Kirchner offered their resignation, which President Fernández did not accept, and the former president sent him an open letter criticizing the course.
The government tried to maintain unity by partially reforming the cabinet and relaunching itself.
But when the agreement was reached to refinance the IMF loan —negotiated between the organization and the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán— and avoid default, the president of the Frente de Todos bloc in the Chamber of Deputies Máximo Kirchner, son of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, resigned from the presidency and decided that he would not support the agreement, strongly criticized by sectors of the left.
A second letter from Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, highly critical of the IMF, had already deepened tensions even further, and the government of Alberto Fernández now continues with little support from his own coalition, and while the opposition grows: both his natural rivals in Together for the Change, like right-wing personalities like newcomer Javier Milei, who is rising in the polls.
In recent months, as inflation accelerates further, the government announced its intentions to launch a tax on "windfall profits" in the context of the economic impacts of the war in Ukraine - including the increase in food prices and fuel—, and the country's agricultural sectors held a protest in the city of Buenos Aires.
Aníbal Fernández against the Court for ruling on the Judiciary 1:04
It was not the only protest that affected the Government: the protests of the "picketers", who block streets in Buenos Aires and other cities demanding social aid, are on the rise, and at the beginning of March, while the IMF agreement was being debated in Congress , there were disturbances between demonstrators and the police, and the office of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was stoned.
Days later, the vice president published a video showing the damage and criticized the IMF again: "It always acted as a promoter and vehicle of policies that caused poverty and pain in the Argentine people."
The road to the 2023 elections
The presidential elections in Argentina will take place in 2023 and in the midst of this complex scenario.
Following the provisions of the Argentine political system, the Open, Simultaneous and Obligatory Primaries (PASO) will be held first, a mandatory instance in which voters are called to choose between the pre-candidates within the same force, and then the general elections will be held. .
Although there is more than a year left for this process, the current difficulties of the Government and the internal open have generated a wave of speculation.
"Each one knows what they have to do and knows what interests they have to defend, therefore I need each and every one of you to be convinced, and those who want to make you believe that in 2023 we are lost, damn we are lost! !" Alberto Fernández said last week at a political rally in the city of José C. Paz, according to the state agency Télam.
Alberto Fernandez Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner