If it weren’t for the terrible image of the government of which he is the formal head and the virulent prejudices of certain Kirchnerists who, for their own reasons, prefer autocracies like Russia to Western democracies, the European tour he has undertaken Alberto Fernandez would be occupying the front pages of the most prestigious media in the world. It happens that Argentina is in better conditions than any other country on the planet to mitigate the damage that the enormous gap that they have left will cause in the international economy. Russia and Ukraine. Although presumably, once the war that has unleashed Vladimir Putin, Ukraine soon regain its place in the trading system dominated by the more developed Western countries, the boycott of Russia is likely to last for several years.
This is not a minor issue for a country that logically should benefit from what, for many others, has been a colossal disaster. Famines are expected soon in African and Middle Eastern countries that are accustomed to importing the wheat they need from “Europe’s breadbasket.” Otherwise Germany, Italy and other countries of the European Union They are in trouble after deciding, for strategic reasons and due to the pressure of public opinion, that they will not be able to continue to depend for much longer on Russian hydrocarbons that are costing them a whopping almost one billion dollars every day.
Europe urgently needs to find alternatives. Since Argentina continues to be an agricultural power and, to top it off, in Dead cow has one of the most valuable gas reserves in the world, if it had not been for the political and ideological problems that keep it paralyzed, it would be preparing to help Europeans do without energy exports from Russia, which would make possible the arrival , finally, of the so often predicted “investment torrent”.
The leaders of Together for Change they are fully aware that the country will have to modify its foreign policy to suit it rather than criticize the extravagant geopolitical notions of Kirchnerist officials and try to persuade their own Western interlocutors that, as long as they return to power, they will behave very differently from the make reintegration into the democratic world an absolute priority.
The confused Kirchnerist ideology is related to a school of thought that, summed up in the slogan “live with what is ours”, aspires to minimize the risk of the country being “colonized” by the unhealthy foreign notions that bother the ultras of the nationalist right and the left ditto. It goes without saying that the consequences for Argentina of the autarkic fantasies thus cultivated have been terrible. Instead of prioritizing exports, many governments, including those of Cristina Kirchner and lately Alberto, have tried to discourage them, which has greatly harmed the majority of the population. Although foreign trade contributes to generating well-being, it also tends to cause difficulties for those companies that cannot or do not want to compete with rivals from other parts of the world and therefore militate in favor of protectionism. A good example of the mentality thus fostered has been provided by the government by banning the private company Flybondi reduce the prices of tickets for domestic flights and in this way harm Aerolineas Argentinas and therefore greatly annoy The Campora.
The American economist Herbert Stein is still remembered for what he said almost four decades ago: “If something cannot last forever, it will stop”. Stein knew that “the law” named after him was a no-brainer, but it was one that, with few exceptions, politicians would rather ignore. To save themselves short-term difficulties, they let problems pile up until they reach an unmanageable critical mass.
This is what has happened in Argentina. The chronic crisis that, to the delight of characters such as the president’s son Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, it is transforming it into “the Venezuela of the South”, it is the foreseeable consequence of more than half a century of principled myopia. This being the case, it is reasonable to ask: How long can the presence in the national government of individuals who are more interested in sowing chaos and tripping up their colleagues than in seeking genuine solutions to the myriad of problems that affect the inhabitants last? from the country? Although for more than a year many have been convinced that it would be impossible to prolong the prevailing strange political and economic status quo any longer, the weeks continue to pass without the spectacular changes that they believed were imminent.
Is it that people are not worried about the brawls between the different official factions because they have become accustomed to living inches from the abyss? Alberto prays that it is a question of an extraordinary capacity to tolerate what in other societies would be intolerable and that nothing terrible happens in the year and a half that, according to the constitutional calendar, he has left in office. Pink House. As for Cristina, her partner in the frantic political dance with which the Frente de Todos is entertaining us, does not hide her desire to replace the government she spawned with another that lives up to her expectations, but it would seem that her hopes in this regard are so vague that not even she knows very well how articulate them.
Like many other politicians, when he speaks he alludes to a country that is radically different from the one in which others live, one in which there are no limits to the money that the government can distribute to ensure the happiness of the people. Cristina also loves to rant about topics such as the one raised by the legitimacy of a government like the current one, which in his opinion and that of his spokesmen as Andres “Crow” Larroque, it arose because the electorate did not know how to properly distinguish between the candidate who appeared on the ballots and the authentic owner of the votes he obtained, but he refrains from going into details about what in his opinion a government that in his opinion would be really legitimate should do, perhaps because the only thing that occurs to him is that he would have to double or triple public spending. Do you really believe it? Maybe so, since for people like her, pointing out that resources are not infinite is typical of petty reactionaries who hate the poor.
For months, Cristina and her faithful from The Campora have been striving to force Alberto Fernandez to give them the head of Martin Guzman, He is guilty of agreeing with him International Monetary Fund and therefore, they insinuate, to empty the popular pocket. They may succeed, but it happens that for Kirchnerism the main enemy is not Guzmán but rather the modest size of the economy that actually exists and that, after coming to power more than ten years ago, they contributed to building, luckily that the possible fall of Joseph Stiglitz’s student would only serve to persuade the markets that Argentina is a hopeless case, which would leave the path that leads to “the Venezuela of the South” virtually clear.
Unfortunately, the stalwarts of Cristina doesn’t have the slightest idea what would be forced to do so that the battered national economy would continue to provide them with the enormous amount of money that they would require to finance the generous plans that, in their opinion, would be necessary to allow them to retain power, and the corresponding funds, which they have known how to conquer. Parasitic by nature, they refuse to understand that the remains of the productive country are no longer in a position to supply them with the resources they need.
When the Kirchnerists once again took charge of the Executive power, They bet that, without Mauricio Macri and his team of CEOs hindering it, the economy would grow spontaneously thanks to a consumer boom led by its electoral clientele from the suburbs of Buenos Aires. They soon realized that it wouldn’t be that easy, but since any rational plan would have included some adjustments, they chose to just complain, with appropriate bitterness, about how bad their inheritance had been.
Since then they have refused, apparently out of principle, to think about what might best be done to improve it, with the result that the country has wasted more than two years that a less irresponsible government could have used to launch a realistic program. of reforms. Although the pandemic and the measures taken to combat it contributed greatly to aggravating an already extremely complicated situation, there is no reason to suppose that the impact of that collective tragedy was decisive. After all, it’s not like I was interrupting a project that it was already running.
