As Cheshire’s cat who was hanging around him Wonderland, Cristina Kirchner He has gotten used to hiding for long periods of time, leaving behind nothing more than an ambiguous smile, somewhere between affectionate and malevolent, only to reappear even though, no matter how much his admirers beg him, he refuses to stay for more than a couple of hours. It’s what he just did when he, instead of promising to lead them to a new epic triumph, he advised them not to curl up because he already gave what he had to give. If a common politician spoke like this, almost everyone would take his words seriously, but because it is Cristina’s question, there are many who refuse to believe that she has really decided to step aside.
Does the vice president resent continued attempts to force her to head a list, any list, of candidates for elective office? She would seem so. Although it is from suppose that she feels gratified when she hears them shout “Cristina Presidenta”, he cannot but take it for a symptom of weakness. After all, she understands very well that it is not only because of her exceptional qualities that, to the surprise of others, the Kirchnerists detect in her that they love her so much, but because they need her. They know that she is the only person who is capable of leading them. They would back Axel Kicillof or Wado de Pedro if they thought they would be as obedient puppets as Alberto, but many would be reluctant to do so if the Frente de Todos candidate turned out to be someone who might betray her as Daniel Scioli or, even more, Sergio Massawhich would surely make the presidential pen a sharp sword.
Kirchnerism is still a work in progress. Despite the costly efforts to shield it with a doctrinal shell, a task that has fallen to the grayish thinkers of the Homeland Institute, continues to depend on the faith that many have in the superlative leadership skills that in their opinion the Maxima leader.
As soon as they received the presidency from the hands of Eduardo Duhalde, Nestor and his wife they understood that, in order to preserve it, they would have to surround themselves with an adequate ideology. They began to create one of the other pieces. With remarkable cunning, supplemented by impressive amounts of public money, they managed to secure the support of a variety of left-leaning groups who wanted to militate against the existing socio-economic status quo. Perhaps the most valuable addition was that of the Manichaean organizations that defended the human rights of their supporters, without caring at all for those who did not share their strong opinions.
Some seduced would justify their adherence to the cause Kirchnerist attributing it to the “charisma” of the founders. Thanks to his efforts, a process of Stendhalian crystallization was set in motion that would explain the extraordinary political success of a lady who, according to Domingo Cavallo, in Santa Cruz had limited herself to serving coffee while her husband talked about important things with politicians. and businessmen who visited him.
He also contributed to making Cristina the queen of the nac&pop country Néstor’s premature death: as Jaime Durán Barba pointed out to Mauricio Macri in the following days, “we cannot beat a widow”. In good logic, the loss of her husband should have harmed the then president, but both here and in the rest of the planet, politics is not a science but an art, a novel in which factors that do not have what to influence at all in the thinking of those who vote.
Unfortunately, for those who believe that people would be better off concentrating on the government programs presented by the candidates, when it comes to choosing the coolest proposals they may be worth less than a face that gives the impression of honesty accompanied by some catchy slogans. or, as happened almost thirteen years ago, the general will to show solidarity with a person who had just suffered a misfortune.
For Cristina, the lack of reliable successors is a major problem. Although she could have foreseen that characters willing to idolize her, obeying her orders without question, fervently applauding all her harangues and ignoring the greed that characterized her, would be unable to take her place, it seems that it did not occur to her that, walking the At the same time, the deficiencies in this regard of the faction that depended exclusively on her could cause her insurmountable difficulties. If the circumstances were different, the fact that no one who shares her attitudes is in a position to replace her would be cause for some satisfaction because it would help to underline her own superiority, but if Kirchnerism disintegrates, as could well happen before the presidential elections, the multi-processed vice president she will be left alone facing what she calls the “judicial party” who, she fears, will be determined to impress the world with its willingness to restore the rule of law by definitively convicting her of the many misdeeds she committed when she had majority approval.
A little over a week ago, Cristina recovered “centrality” -to use a word with geometric resonances that, like “space”, has been incorporated into the national political lexicon-, by giving a “master class” that for a brief moment deserved the attention of those interested in the vicissitudes of those who are participating in the electoral contest. The doctor took advantage of the opportunity to make Javier Milei the main opponent of the eventual pro-government candidate with the hope of depriving Patricia Bullrich and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta of votes, to lash out at Cavallo for having “light eyes” – she will have learned from the North American progressives that such characteristics are sinister-, and to implicitly support Sergio Massa without for that reason giving up blaming the International Monetary Fund for the inflationary storm that is shaking the economy and impoverishing the bulk of the population.
If Cristina and her acolytes sincerely believed that the IMF, an institution that in its own way represents the developed world, is behind the monumental Argentine disaster, they would have already forced Alberto Fernández and Massa to break relations with those allegedly responsible for the disaster. They have not done so because they know that the immediate consequences would be as terrible as those that followed the festive default of December 2001. However, from the point of view of the most lucid Kirchnerists, alluding to the mere possibility that they did so makes sense. because it could help Massa to get more concessions from his interlocutors Kristalina Georgieva and Gita Gopinath, as well as his friends in the US political scene, since he will be able to warn them that unless they give him what he asks for, Argentina will commit suicide, a disaster that would have tremendously negative repercussions for tottering international finances. Although no one is unaware that the Argentine economy is sui generis and that it would be a mistake to link its problems with those that are causing difficulties in other parts of the world, there is no doubt that an implosion, even if it were attributable to nothing more than the eccentricities of those in charge of administering it, would have a very destructive global impact.
Massa will also be able to warn his North American friends that the hardliners of Kirchnerism are thinking of playing the Chinese card and that therefore it would be dangerous for them to refuse to help him get more money from the IMF. Although the Chinese tend to be even more rigorous when it comes to fiscal discipline than the Japanese and Germans, for geopolitical reasons they would make an exception in the case of Argentina until it was firmly included in their sphere of influence. The strategy thus supposed has already given them promising results both in Africa and in the Middle East, and judging by the recent behavior of Lula who, to the alarm of Washington, in the face of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine has adopted a position that is similar to that of Xi Jinping, is beginning to produce dividends in Latin America.
Neither Cristina nor those around her are willing to admit that their repeated attempts to reshape Argentina have had catastrophic consequences. Like the Procrustean Bed of Greek mythology in which the protagonist placed unsuspecting guests to then cut off their legs and arms or stretch them with a hammer to make them fit on it, the story to which they pay homage has served as a pretext to mutilate the country. As is natural for them, they insist that what happened is not their fault but, in Cristina’s magisterial opinion, the Fund and their disastrous local allies, with minds colonized by Yankee imperialists, who do not believe in the benefits of the omnipresent State that Kirchnerist patriots are trying to build. For now, proposals in this sense only convince those who are already convinced, but as soon as a new government, headed by the winner of the Juntos por el Cambio internship or by Javier Milei, has begun the “dirty work” that it will be necessary to undo what the Kirchnerists have done, many others might be tempted by the idea that the country’s chronic problems are due to an evil international conspiracy.
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