It was on March 1, 2020, at the beginning of the ordinary sessions in Congress (the virtual launch of his administration) when Alberto Fernández, escorted by Cristina Kirchner and Sergio Massa, announced:
"We are a government of scientists, we are not a CEOS government”
(it is known, in opposition to the Macri administration).
The definition was quickly emptied of content, and it has been repeated dozens of times out of irony, in the face of obvious clumsiness in decision-making.
But the call to the union of truckers -led with threatening language by Pablo Moyano-, to participate in the control of supply and prices in supermarkets confirms
the total debacle of that claim.
The contrast is so brutal that it exempts us from arguments: it is difficult to find
anything further from scientific speculation, even from a certain technical sophistication, than the patoteric aesthetics and the staging of the squeeze
led by Oscar Borda, executing arm of the Secretary of Truckers' violence, and communicated in a video distributed by the union itself.
Nor does
Moyano
's definition of what
"Businessmen encanute the merchandise and then go remarking prices."
The move can only be explained by Sergio Massa's difficulties in reaching the promised 3% inflation in April, which will allow him to consolidate the presidential aspirations that he denies having (but no one believes his refusal), and at the same time
wink at Kirchnerist nucleus
that
by default
claims to point out companies as responsible for all evils.
In the Government they even admitted - consulted by the newspaper
La Nación
- that what the truckers do in the distribution centers, and the possible complaints,
do not even have a legal framework that supports them.
In addition, and if necessary, the lack of originality and effectiveness of the resource is verified by remembering that in March it will be three years since some mayors of the suburbs, at the beginning of the pandemic,
heroically photographed themselves in front of the gondolas
, ready, like truckers today, to comply with price controls.
Espinoza in La Matanza, Gray in Echeverría, Descalzo in Ituzaingó and Zabaleta in Hurlingham, among other Peronist leaders, did not achieve much more than the photo.
A few months later, it was some trade unionists (although the CGT saved themselves a lot of trouble by staying on the sidelines) who, form and pen in hand,
also inspected gondolas without luck
.
This Government even offered the image of the former Secretary of Commerce, Paula Español, meter in hand, in a supposed verification of the gondola law.
Result?
Accumulated inflation in the Fernández presidency reached 299%.
If none of the above worked, why would you do it now?
Maybe it's just a show set up for their own consumption.
However, and although it seems the same as other times, it is not.
If the mayors, trade unionists and officials photographed in the supermarkets communicated ineffectiveness, the prominence of Moyano and his "drivers" enables another reading, communicates other ideas, sends another message:
the idea of public management through threats, pressure and fear
.
To inflation, Massa will have added another problem that is as or more difficult to end.
