It has never been a secret that what you want most Cristina de Kirchner is power without responsibility. She wants power not only because it allows her to dominate those around her, but also because she is what has thus far kept her out of the reach of the law. From her point of view, the only downside to power is that in democratic societies it often comes with responsibility. Her way of solving this cumbersome problem has been very simple: she refuses to assume them. If something good happens, it is thanks to her wisdom: as for misfortunes, they are due to the vileness of others.
The vice president knows better than anyone that the management of the government that she put together, and of which she is the undisputed head, has been atrocious, but she insists that others are to blame for the spectacular failure of her own strategy, including Alberto Fernandez, Mauricio Macri and, needless to say, the hated technicians of the International Monetary Fund who do not understand anything about economics. He has always acted like this, stealthily moving away from the disaster scene in the hope of preserving the glittering image that, with the enthusiastic collaboration of his dependents, he has managed to create.
It is what Cristina is doing now. She understands that it would be a true miracle if a Kirchnerist presidential candidate managed to prevail in the upcoming elections, which logically would have to be herself because she would win an inmate in her “space” so easily that it would not be worth holding one. Although Macri’s experience should having shown him that it is possible to survive an electoral setback more or less intact, he does not intend to sacrifice himself by rehearsing a quixotic epic. Still, even though he has come to the conclusion that another humiliating defeat in the dark room would cost him even more than refusal to appear on any elective list – a decision that, to the despair of his fans, he confirmed once again last week -, most likely you were wrong. While some militants will presumably remain loyal to her forever, others clearly feel betrayed by a female leader who has abandoned them in the middle of a bloody battle. They won’t forgive her.
Thus, the personal destiny of the lady who heads the movement that, despite the brief Macrista interregnum, has reigned over the country for twenty years, will depend on the reaction of the many who joined Kirchnerism because they understood that it would be profitable to do. Without the input of such opportunists who, of course, abound in the political world both here and in the rest of the planet, Cristina and her collaborators they would never have managed to tame the other Peronists who, after weighing the advantages and disadvantages of subservienting themselves to a notoriously bossy woman, decided that they would do better if they collaborated for a while with a project that many thought extravagant. If the feeling spreads among such people that they can disobey orders “from above” with impunity, the informal power that Cristina still retains will soon completely evaporate.
Now, the baroque story improvised by the followers of Nestor Kirchner first and then, with greater emphasis, Cristina’s acolytes, is essentially escapist. She offers an alternative to the real country, one in which progress is not measured by concrete advances but by merely verbal constructions and popular attendance at organized street events. For a long time, this story worked so that a substantial part of the population resisted paying attention to the growing divergence that occurred between the official Argentina and the country in which beings of flesh and blood had to live, but every day that passes are fewer willing to be fooled like this.
It is not that the majority have come to terms with reality; on the contrary, many are seeking refuge in another voluntaristic fantasy, the predicate by Javier Mileiand, with notable success, he has appropriated the rancor that has always been a key ingredient both in the Kirchnerist ideological concoction and in others that over the years have been concocted by different variants of Peronism. In her own way, Milei is one more product of the facile mentality that has led the country to the extremely dangerous situation in which it finds itself. His growing popularity is not due to his ideas and proposals but to the furious anger that he has patented.
Many are convinced that Cristina’s resignation -heroic, exemplary, misleading or miserable, it doesn’t matter- means the end of an era and therefore the beginning of another, although no one has the slightest idea what it will be like. Are we about to experience a paradigm shift or will it just be a matter of replacing certain characters with others who turn out to be equally reluctant to undertake those fearsome “structural reforms” that, in the opinion of virtually all specialists in socioeconomic development who live in societies considered advanced , will they have to be carried out so that Argentina returns to being a relatively prosperous country?
It is a question that many are asking themselves. If gattopardism triumphs once again, according to which everything has to change so that nothing changes, the Kirchnerist electoral disaster predicted by Cristina would be unimportant when she alludes to the risk of the ruling party being overwhelmed by Milei’s ultras so that her eventual candidate does not even get to participate in the ballotage that at this point seems inevitable. On the other hand, if, as a result of the elections, the country manages to equip itself with a genuine government that, to the surprise of the skeptics, manages to consolidate itself, it would at least be possible for it to free itself from the suicidal vocation that for so long has prevented from progressing.
For their own reasons, many are preparing to thwart any effort to break down the cultural barriers that keep Argentina trapped in a maddeningly repetitive present in which all attempts to escape end so badly that the citizenry opts to go back to square one and try Good luck again with the old, albeit slightly modified, populist recipe. It will be extremely difficult to break with this ill-fated cyclical tradition because, for many millions of people, the best way to solve the problems caused by populist short-termism will be to apply doses of populism that are even greater than before.
It goes without saying that the Kirchnerists, the ultra-conservatives of the Trotskyist left and those impudently committed to provincial feudalism are impatiently awaiting the arrival of a government of another sign; they trust that he will provide them with endless pretexts to rise up in rebellion against him in the name of social justice, the fight against savage capitalism, the right or whatever. The piqueteros are already training for the great battles they see approaching, sporadically occupying areas of the Federal Capital and mocking the indignation of those affected by what they are doing.
Before Milei jumped into the political ring, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and other optimists dreamed of the victory of an electoral coalition that would be so broad that the resulting government, shielded by the support of seventy percent or more of the voters, would be in a position to make against those determined to defend the old populist model. Unfortunately for those convinced that the calamitous management of Alberto, Cristina and Sergio Massa would provoke a healthy reaction, there is currently talk of a “triple tie” in which the winner will have reached the runoff with at most half of the votes that , last year, were considered necessary for a reformist government to enjoy sufficient authority to carry out the program that Together for Change leaders had in mind.
And, as if this were not more than enough to darken the prospects for the country, everything raises fears that, thanks to the disastrous combination of a brutal drought and the irrational conduct of a government cracked up in panic, in the coming months the economic crisis becomes much worse than seemed likely less than a year ago and that therefore an adjustment would be required that is much more severe than that anticipated by those who are still waiting to be summoned to take charge, in a relatively short time, of the battered national economy.
For decades, some have toyed with the idea that to get out of the populist cloud that obfuscated it, the country would have to suffer an even more destructive socioeconomic catastrophe than those already experienced, which is why it would be better to let governments like that of Isabelita or, lately, the one from the Alberto-Cristina duo, did their thing until everything fell apart. If there were no more than two conceivable escape routes, it would be reasonable to assume that, after being convinced that one was not passable, almost everyone would choose the other, but it turns out that those who have benefited from the populist order are determined to go anywhere. extreme to perpetuate without caring at all what happens to others.
