Serge Massa is big. It measures exactly one meter and eighty-three centimeters. In the photo, however, he appears much taller, a giant, almost as long as the grin plastered on his face. But the confusion is not about a Photoshop trick, but is due to a much older phenomenon than special effects: it is the stroke of magic generated by having and exercising power.
When Alberto Fernandez saw the picture, which the photographer took Franco Fafauli and that went viral on the networks and in all the layers of the red circle, she got a feeling that at this point she is already one more tenant of the Quinta de Olivos, a mixture between anger, impotence and resignation. “But you saw me, didn’t you?”, the President said out loud, to his interlocutors on occasion, “you saw that I went down to greet Batakis, who had arrived late for the event and had not been able to cross it before, not that I left alone like an asshole”. It is that the photo portrayed an enlarged Massa, seconds after being sworn in as the new Minister of Economy, who was left with the monopoly of the stage while the President descended on one side, crestfallen and without any company. In the image, in addition, they looked like all the heads and the cameras pointed at the tigress. Nobody looked at the one who, at least on paper, is the highest head of the Executive Branch.
The magical effect that made Massa appear even taller than he is ends up being exactly the same that affects Fernández, in the opposite direction. Although what Alberto said was true – the outgoing minister had arrived at the Bicentennial Museum with the act already started, and Fernández hurried off the stage to exchange a few words with her -, there is a stage of the loss of power where he becomes care very little what is real and what is not. When society -and the government itself- begins to see the king naked, it is very difficult to imagine him dressed and sitting on the throne again. The latest flurry of ministers, which culminated in the arrival of Massa, left a conclusion first of all: Alberto became a Jibarized President.
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What a disagreement. It is true that the debate about Fernández’s authority and presence within the coalition is not new. It exists from the very minute that Cristina Kirchner He published the video of the candidacy on his networks, due to the strange combination that occurred between a President without votes accompanied by a Vice President who has almost all of them. But that old arm wrestling, which appeared both inside and outside, seems today to be about to be resolved. And the coin is not about to fall on Alberto’s side.
Tracing the exact moment when the balance finished tipping will be a task for future historians. In the Albertist circle, in recent days, a story has been repeated that contains two chapters, which for many meant the last watershed in the decline of the presidential investiture.
The first part dates from the weekend of Martín Guzmán’s resignation, when Alberto resisted CFK’s proposal for an alternative Cabinet that maintained its forms but meant letting go of his historic friend, Labor Minister Claudio Moroni, whom the K’s hate. The second is about what happened three weeks later. There the vice president visited Fernández in Olivos -a meeting that existed and was key to the future of the coalition, despite the fact that the Presidency later denied it-, and between the two they finished outlining Massa’s arrival at the Ministry of Economy. “Alberto was the first to propose to Sergio, both when Kulfas left and when Guzmán left, the position. But later he did not want to accept what Cristina proposed so as not to kick Moroni out, and he ended up arriving at exactly the same place but losing a lot of power in the middle. It’s a shame, ”one of his surroundings lamented. It is a very repeated thesis in the presidential circle: that what happens has Alberto’s permission and even planning, but that everything is so poorly managed, mainly by him, that he is relegated to the center of the stage.
Contrary to the most repeated image today of the President, beaten and dissociated from reality, he himself is the first to be aware of the precarious place in which he finds himself trapped. It is a reality that haunts him like the ghost of Christmas past and that, depending on the day and the mood, makes him sad or angry. When the first thing happens, Alberto leans on his most intimate political circle. He sends messages, makes invitations, asks about the steps to follow, asks for opinions, listens and reflects. They are sensitive moments in which his friends do not even dare to spend it because of the consecutive defeats that the team he is a fan of, Argentinos Juniors, has been chaining. In general, this was the climate that prevailed in the days after Massa’s imminent arrival at the ministry reached the media. Fernández knew that the reading that was going to be done was that of the President emptied of power. Those who spoke with him the weekend before the Tigrense’s inauguration say they found him “depressed.”
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The other side of this state of mind, like someone denying a duel, is exaggerated proactivity, which Fernández mixes with some anger. It is the one that led him to say, to the bewilderment of the almost thousand present at the oath, that he “had summoned” Massa for the position. Although, as was recently reported, the President had offered him that position a month ago, no one at the Bicentennial Museum at that time believed the official version. Also the displacement of Claudio Lozano as director of Banco Nación was an attempt to strike a blow on the table. This movement had been loudly requested by almost the entire coalition for a long time -the former official’s constant criticism of the government he was part of bothered everyone-, and in particular by Silvina Batakis since the President offered her the presidency of that entity. But the President only accelerated on the night of Tuesday the 9th, and took out one of the weakest partners of the ruling party. It was, more than a strategic decision on the course of the Government, a sign of Alberto’s empowerment. He wanted to send the message that they haven’t beaten him yet.
Future. These days there is a fear that lives in Alberto and several of his circle. It is the fear of falling in comparison with De la Rúa. Since the then President skated on Tinelli’s program, he was never seen again as someone with authority or seriousness, beyond his real capacities. “They are making us look like him,” laments a man from his circle. The idea of the ridiculed Alberto not only angers the protagonist, but also raises great questions about how to escape from this ghost.
The other issue that generates concern is about the position in the 2023 elections. Although the President is often attacked by tantrums, in which he swears that at least he will compete in the PASO, there are times when he lowers his guard and admits the intricacies in which it is found. Hence the doubt. “It’s that if they ask me, I can’t not say that I’m going to compete, imagine how I would continue from here until the end of the mandate if not”, is a phrase that he usually uses to explain the debate. It is the fear of lame duck syndrome.
In any case, except for his most intimate, all the rest of the coalition thinks that, in the best of cases and if the economy achieves the miracle of improvement, at most Alberto will be lucky enough to place the presidential sash on another member of the Front of all.
With friends like that. There is an anecdote attributed to Napoleon that is often used to explain modern politics. He narrates a dinner attended by the then Emperor, for which a chair had been prepared for him at one of the heads of the table. But, to everyone’s surprise, when Bonaparte arrived he sat down on one side. When asked why he did not occupy one of the corners, as protocol required, he left a sentence for the story: “The head is where I sit.”
The postcard that Alberto Fernández left in the first act that he shared with Minister Massa, the day after his swearing-in, was exactly the opposite of what Napoléon postulated. In an image circulated by the Presidency team itself -and which, behind closed doors, unleashed a storm of criticism towards the spokeswoman, Gabriela Cerruti, the person in charge of that team-, the President was shown in a talk on the train that was taking him, Massa and several other officials to the event in Santa Fe, on Friday the 5th. The image, which illustrates this note, does not need much more description: Fernández seems to be a secondary actor in the scene, and the header, I would say Bonaparte, it’s where Massa sat.
“Alberto sends a thousand snots, that’s true, but those who are with him on a day-to-day basis don’t take care of him,” complains an official who answers to the President. The increasingly widespread thesis that Albertism itself complicates Alberto’s life has an easy reality check: the last big blows suffered by his authority happened when Kulfas and Guzmán left their posts, especially the second . “He defended them tooth and nail since we started and they left him very exposed,” says the same man, who points out that the president built a toxic relationship with his circle. It is clear that this reading excludes the daily siege that both received, and many others who left the Government, from the K troop, but that does not make it any less true that the construction of the Jibarized President was crowned with the hasty exit of Guzmán .
Perhaps one should also ask how much of Alberto’s defense of the former Albertists was not, in truth, a defense of himself and his disputed authority. If defending Guzmán and Kulfas meant defending himself -for which the tension with the other part of the ruling party was destined to be inevitable-, one must accept that there were necessarily two paths and only two: break with the critics and empower oneself or let them his allies tire and abandon him, tarnishing his image until he becomes a decorative President. You know how the story ended.
“To lead the space I would have had to fight with Cristina”, is a conclusion that Alberto sometimes shares in private, a phrase that explains by itself the problem and the mud in which he is trapped. So, the cage in which the President locked himself hides a much deeper reality: it is that the bars were built by him. Whether or not he left a door to escape is for now a mystery.
