Facundo Manes sits in one of the inns in Pinamar, where he came to visit his family after presenting his latest book in Mar del Plata. The work was scheduled for last year, but had to be postponed due to her decision to participate in the elections. The neuroscientist turned national deputy for the province of Buenos Aires is getting used to his new role as a politician and does not shy away from the debates that heat up the summer between the Government and Together for Change.
NEWS: How did the year begin after being elected as a deputy?
Facundo Manes: I went to San Francisco, California, because I am a teacher there. I was not going to be a candidate in March, so I had to accommodate many international commitments that I had, because I am president of the International Society of Frontotemporal Dementias. I had to explain to them that my country was in a special situation and required people to commit. That’s why I now traveled to California to explain a little more in person and fix everything.
NEWS: Did they understand your decision to get involved in politics?
Hands: They did not understand so much, it was by mail at that time. But they continue to protect me, making me feel that I am still present in the organization.
NEWS: How do you see that the pandemic affected people mentally?
Hands: The emotional impact of the pandemic is overwhelming. Today the newspapers of the United States or Spain talk about anxiety, depression, insomnia, chronic stress. Rich and developed countries that are prioritizing mental health… Imagine a country like Argentina, which has been getting poorer for a long time or lost its job in the pandemic.
NEWS: How do you take the division in radicalism after the elections?
Hands: I think that luckily now it has been resolved and unity has been achieved, because now there is radicalism with Gerardo Morales as president and Martín Lousteau as second vice president. The idea that everyone told me and I read is that the whole block is going to get together and that for me is the best solution because I believe that society not only demands that we be together but that we have clear ideas. That is why I think that the solution to all the divisions that have happened and will happen is a programmatic agreement, ideas. People do not want more alliance between the leadership, they want ideas. Knowing what programmatic agreement is going to move the country forward, that is going to guide the opposition, I am going to work for that. Let ideas unite or separate us, not egos.
NEWS: Do you agree when Morales acknowledges that the debt with the IMF was generated by the opposition?
Hands: I believe that the debt is one of the three or four state issues along with education, the productive matrix, geopolitics, these are issues that we all have to sit down to discuss. It not only involves the present but also the future of all Argentines. The problem I see is that in the government there is an internal, an anomalous situation, where the president is who does not have as much power as the vice president who put him in power. If the Government does not solve the internal one, it cannot ask the opposition to sit down and chat.
NEWS: Does it worry you when Soledad Acuña talks about young people already lost to education?
Hands: Education is something that worries me since I returned to the country in 2001 and started touring Argentina. Education for me is not a slogan, it changed my life as surely it changed many others, I was not born into an elite. My greatest weapon to go out and advance was education, so for me this topic is something personal. I did not come to fight for a position, I came to fight so that society presses for modernity, for progress.
NEWS: Who is Mauricio Macri for you?
Hands: A former president to whom I recognize the merit of having created a political party, of having entered politics and having been the non-Peronist president who finished a term after 90 years.
NEWS: And Horacio Rodríguez Larreta?
manes: He seems to me to be a professional politician who has dreamed of being president since he was a child.
NEWS: Do you consider yourself presidential?
Hands: I think that Argentina, more than presidential candidates or presidents, needs leaders. Being a leader is different from being a president, it is someone who articulates a vision and moves forward. Argentina needs inspiring leaders because society is resigned, it no longer believes in anything. We need leadership that turns resignation into hope.
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