Power is cynical, cruel and selfish. But also naïve: he thinks he's always going to be there. Kirchnerism was in power for twenty of the forty years of democracy. It went from "let's go for everything" to "let's go for a third".
The crack turned ten years old: it is in good health and as Kirchnerism recedes, it increases. Kirchnerism is today a party of Greater Buenos Aires. It should not be confused with the Peronism of the Interior, which survives for other reasons.
The May 25 event coincides with the final week of HBO's Succession. On screen, the sons of billionaire Logan Roy vie for control of the world's largest entertainment and news complex. It is difficult to know what will happen, but it is clear that no one can replace Logan: nature imitates art, as Oscar Wilde said.
In Kirchnerist Argentina there are no replacements either: what was dreamed of as a family project (Néstor-Cristina-Máximo) was truncated and on Friday morning the City was filled with posters that said "Wado is coming". "A son of the decimated generation" arrives, as Cristina announced on C5N.
Wado's father, a Montonero, was murdered in 1977 and his mother has been missing since the following year. "Cristina empowered Maximo," a Kirchner leader told Clarín. The vice president is moving in the direction proposed by her son, who may be proposed as a senator for the Province. If that happens, the last name Kirchner will appear on the ballot before that of the gubernatorial candidate.
Axel Kicillof, near Cristina in the box of the act of May 25. Photo: Maxi Failla
Kicillof knows that better Province in hand than country flying and tries to stay in his -as it were- comfort zone. Today relations are strained. It even cost the governor to get his closest collaborators into the VIP box: until Wednesday they did not give them the access bracelet. In the governor's inner circle, they say that now the pressure has stopped. "Axel has the premise of gathering votes in the province to win the two elections, the provincial and the national," an official close to him told this newspaper.
If mathematics still exists in Argentina, it would be interesting to analyze these twenty Kirchnerist years in hard numbers:
- The State at all levels went from representing 20% of GDP in 2003 to 37% today. "That spending is financed with taxes that hunt in the zoo and that stimulated the economy to become more and more informal," economist Ricardo Delgado, director of the Analytica consultancy, told Clarín.
- Poverty was 20% in 2013 and, although the State grew, today it reaches 42% and in children the chilling 60%.
- The Universal Child Allowance covered the total basic basket of a child in 2008 and today it reaches only 26%. "Inflation ate the social flag of Kirchnerism," concludes Delgado. The AUH is $11,540 per month.
- "Kirchnerism accumulated between 2003 and 2010 reserves for US $ 42,000 million, but between 2011 and 2015 US $ 27,000 million left. Today they are in the negative," Delgado continues.
- "In the four years of the government of Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Kirchner there was a fall in real wages of 13% for formal workers and 35% for informal workers," adds economist Esteban Domeq.
- Interest rates reached 154% per year and not only exceed those of Macri's management but are at a maximum peak of the last 30 years.
- Today reserves are negative at $7 billion.
As a story kills mathematics it is interesting to observe the results of a focus group conducted for a report by Tres Punto Cero for Clarín: What is Kirchnerism today?
- For the K's it is "a more progressive Peronism, which expands rights and is added to the agenda of the XXI century."
- Kirchnerism describes a dichotomous society, where political power does not coincide with real power.
- According to Shila Vilker's consultancy for the K's, big business has almost unlimited influence over society while political power can only intervene occasionally. CFK and Nestor were encouraged to intervene and that is why they suffered persecution.
"The people are with Cristina and the media and justice distort that image," they say.
The last chapter of "Succession" is this Sunday. We'll have to see what happens.
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