This Thursday, one of the main political swords of Elisa Carrió and president of the Civic Coalition-ARI,
Maximiliano Ferraro
, presented an open letter to the President of the Nation, since “the deep debate that Argentina needs cannot take place in 140 characters".
Not only in the government does the discomfort continue after the failure of the treatment of the Omnibus Law in Deputies.
The opposition leaders are dazzled by the subsequent statements of the president, members of the ruling party and official accounts on the networks.
Both Javier Milei and various members of the ruling party demonstrated their discontent.
Traitors, caste, criminals and liars
were some of the words thrown against members of the opposition.
With barely contained anger, Ferraro details how his bloc worked to polish many articles of the so-called Bases law, which was voted in general and with many coincidences in particular as well, although they could not express themselves because the ruling party withdrew the project when the special powers were rejected. for the president.
Finally, it emphasizes
the importance of dialogue and respect for institutions.
He asks that this speech of "public escrache" be ended since it "promotes political violence", which, "is not only dangerous for his enemies, it is also dangerous for his government."
Open Letter to the President of the Nation
The profound debate that Argentina needs cannot occur in 140 characters, that is why this open letter.
Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, February 8, 2024
Mr. President of the Argentine Nation
Mr. Javier Milei
With the greatest of considerations for your presidential investiture, I address you with the sole purpose of responding and not contributing with my silence to the consolidation of
each of the lies and deceptions
that together with your communication team you have decided to promote
and install since on Tuesday night, after, unilaterally, the ruling party of Libertad Avanza moved to leave the premises and finally withdraw the Bases Bill.
Since the study and debate of the project began, the official story has sought to put a sector of the opposition in the position of
an obstacle that must be overcome, or an enemy that must be annihilated.
Behind their accusations towards our people as extortionists, disloyal, resistant to reforms and, since Tuesday also, traitors and criminals, they tried to hide the only true objective that they pursued with this law, and that on Tuesday night they have confessed:
govern without Congress
, either with the alleged superpowers of delegated powers, through exceptional decrees of necessity and urgency, or even in a plebiscitary manner.
The change they advocate is only conceived with the concentration of power
and canceling the democratic activity of Parliament.
I will not be complicit with my silence nor will I ignore the harassment and
slanderous and malicious accusations
.
With this letter I intend to respond to each of them as a contribution to public truth and the institutions of democracy.
If you do not want to believe, I assure you that the president of the Chamber, the authorities of the commissions, the ruling bloc and its co-ruling allied bloc, its ministers and officials, and even the scribes of the Law, and also Mr. Federico Sturzenegger, can bear witness and faith to the enormous work that we carry out from the Civic Coalition to sanction the vast majority of the intended reforms.
We did it without extortion, without transaction, with absolute transparency and intellectual honesty
, expressing all our positions publicly and in front of the citizens.
1.“(...) they are traitors who vote against the reforms (...)”
First of all, no reform was put to the vote on Tuesday.
Only 5 articles were voted with their respective subsections whose sole purpose was
to grant you superpowers and delegated powers
expressly prohibited by the National Constitution.
Many of them could well be acts of the administration.
Nobody voted against any reform, if you and your bloc had allowed the particular treatment of the law to continue, we could have approved a large number of them in terms of production, energy, free trade, transparency, education, public employment, suppression of privileges , antitrust, among many others.
Indeed,
it seems that these reforms were not as important to him as obtaining superpowers
.
On our part you will always find reformist will and absolute rejection of legislative delegation.
You cannot accuse those of us who never promised you delegated powers as traitors
.
It is public and known that the Civic Coalition would not vote for superpowers.
We were born as a party rejecting these powers to Domingo Cavallo, we denied them to Eduardo Duhalde, Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Kirchner, and we were intransigent in our own government from 2015 to 2019. Rejecting superpowers is not obstructionism but preservation of the institutional role of Parliament, because They violate articles 76 and 29 of the National Constitution, which prohibit Congress from legislative delegation and from granting extraordinary powers or the sum of public power.
Superpowers are one of the great causes of the institutional and economic decline of our country, when Congress delegates power to a single person or a bureaucracy, it weakens the government and
makes it increasingly a prisoner of lobbies or corporate interests.
For this reason, in no way have we from the Civic Coalition betrayed either the citizens or the legislative agreements.
The narrative manipulation that has been made of the few articles that could be voted on delegated powers is so exaggerated that we are accused of having voted against the fight against drug trafficking and human trafficking.
It is miserable to distort the facts because they are sacred:
the section in question was not presented by the Executive nor incorporated by Minister Patricia Bullrich, but by a sector of the opposition
in order to justify the declaration of emergency in matters of security and the chapter of reforms to the Penal Code that only dealt with blockades, demonstrations, legitimate defense and resistance to authority.
There were not in the original bill sent by the Executive, nor in the majority opinion, nor in the shared drafts, any type of reforms or initiatives that will aim at the fight against complex crimes and organized crime, production and drug trafficking, terrorism, among other crimes mentioned in the section.
Without a doubt, it was an empty delegative base, whose incorporation and presence lacked any reason and legal foundation in relation to the articles and reforms of the law.
2.“There are sectors of politics that resist making the changes that the country needs. They are going to have to explain to society why.”
Conservatives and corporatists have resistance to change; in the Civic Coalition we are neither one thing nor the other.
For this reason,
we generally support the bill
, willing to propose improvements and modifications, just as we did in the opinion that we signed in the plenary session of the Commissions, where we rescued and improved a huge number of its proposals, and which of course
we would support and vote on. The enclosure
.
These included the declaration of emergency in economic, financial, fiscal, security and administrative matters;
the privatization of 18 public companies;
good corporate governance of public companies;
the fiscal package;
an alternative for a new mobility formula for retirement benefits;
reforms in energy, fuel and gas, among many others aimed at achieving the shared objective of fiscal balance, elimination of privileges and reduction of obstacles to economic activity.
Not only did we decide to support many of these reforms, but we proposed to your government the adoption of other reforms aimed at
ending the privileges and corporate benefits
that a few enjoy, such as the reduction of tax expenditure implied
by tax exemption regimes and especially that of the electronics industry in Tierra del Fuego.
We arrived at the venue knowing that we would support with our vote not only the sections and articles that we included in our opinion, but also others whose definitions were improved during weeks of collaborative work between Executive officials and the different blocks that we chose to be a constructive opposition.
Personally, I dedicated my greatest efforts together with the Secretary of Education, Carlos Torrendel, to find together the agreements that would allow us to advance the urgent reforms that the educational system needs.
We achieved this in many of the articles thanks to the professionalism of the official and his team, but above all because of the spirit of dialogue and consensus that the issue merited.
These efforts were also in other topics and chapters of the bill.
Our rejections on the premises would be focused mainly and exclusively on the delegated powers and on the environmental and cultural setback, but the ruling party decided to go back to square one and abandon all the reforms for which there was agreement.
3.“(...) the political caste, that group of criminals who want a worse Argentina and who are not willing to give up their privileges.”
What you call and generalize as “privileges” we have denounced and called by name for more than 20 years:
corrupt patrimonialism, improper business in public office, illicit enrichment, influence peddling, overpricing and economic corporatism.
We have been denouncing corruption alone for more than two decades, when very few dared to speak out while you worked for businessmen who were friends of Kirchnerism.
You will not find, in my defense, any of the privileges that politicians, union members, sectorial businessmen and sports leaders in our country have exercised and taken advantage of for decades.
During all my work
I have never had an official car or personal driver, I have not requested official passports
or VIP treatment at airports, nor have I been receptive to business lobbies or managed their interests.
It is you who should explain to the people the decision to maintain certain privileges of “the caste.”
To give just one example, in our opinion
we advocate for the end of privileged retirements
, and we also seek to end privileges that not even libertarians dared to touch.
It will be due to a lack of will or character, or it will be due to
the family and personal interests of some officials and front-line strategists
, but there was no agreement to reform and reduce the privileges and corporate businesses of the Fiscal Regime of Tierra del Fuego and the records of the automotive.
4.“(...) the betrayal of their voters by all the blocks that turned their backs on their campaign promises for a different Argentina.”
If we are going to talk about betrayal of the electorate, it is better not to audit his campaign promises in relation to his initial fiscal program presented in the Base Law, focused on placing the weight of the adjustment on the productive export sectors through the general increase in withholdings;
and on retirees by liquefying their income through inflation.
That
is not only treason, it is also pure and simple economic Kirchnerism.
The Civic Coalition was always available to seriously discuss a fiscal package, because
we consider the public deficit as the main problem to be solved
and fiscal balance as the main objective to be achieved.
The ruling party decided, instead, to withdraw it from the Bases Law.
Our opinion also sought
to protect the income of retirees
, repealing the update formula voted by Kirchnerism and establishing monthly inflation as an indicator of variation in assets.
The libertarian ruling party, on the other hand, preferred to postpone any reform of the formula, liquefy retirements to achieve the fiscal goal and use the ANSES Sustainability Guarantee Fund.
Sorry if we have overwhelmed you with our differences and dissidences, each of them were made with a deep humanist sense, recognizing the pain and suffering that Argentines experience today and that should challenge us when making each of our decisions.
I feel ashamed of the growing moral blindness
that manifests itself in the loss of sensitivity to the suffering of others and our ability to solve Argentina's most urgent problems.
We have to be able to recognize and respond to millions of Argentinians who today feel excluded, failures, losers and not deserving of success or social promotion.
Treating traitors or criminals and publishing the faces of those of us who defend the rule of law does nothing more than
encourage public outrage and violence
based on a fallacious and dangerous story.
Encouraging and promoting political violence is not only dangerous for its enemies, it is also dangerous for its government, which is ultimately responsible for the institutional future.
As you will see, Mr. President, your story has no basis in objective reality.
Here he has a responsible opposition open to dialogue, willing to vote for the reforms that Argentines need to get out of the crisis we are going through.
We have sat down in plenary to discuss and work on the proposals, we have even prepared an opinion that includes the majority of them and we had a quorum in the session ready to vote on them.
Both you and I know that
a superpowers law is equivalent to suspending political dialogue
, that is, the search for better options and decision-making based on the difference of ideas and common objectives.
Please return to the path of dialogue and respect for the institutions of the republic
.
We can dialogue and work together but know that we will never violate the National Constitution on which we have sworn.
I regret, and I hope I am wrong, that I am willing to
deprive Argentines of the change that has been so forcefully required at the polls
.
Don't let your pride blind you.
You will find in us the will to discuss and advance the changes and fight against the privileges that Argentina needs to return to the path of development.
Only the truth will set us free.
Without further ado, I greet you very carefully,
Maximiliano Ferraro
Deputy of the Nation
ARI Civic Coalition