Everything would be easier if the times of politics coincided with those set with such precision by the national Constitution, but this is far from being the case. Although it would seem that Kirchnerism he is already giving his death rattles because the failure of the order he has installed is painfully evident, he still has 18 months left in power. Until the end of next yearTherefore, Argentina will have to deal with a government that lacks the authority it would need to prevent the economic crisis from wreaking havoc that is even more serious than what it has already caused. Although nothing is written, many fear that another socioeconomic cataclysm awaits the country.
Since they are not in a position to govern with solvency, the different factions of the Front of All they have chosen to focus on fighting for “boxes” that they hope will allow them to survive the disasters they see approaching with disconcerting speed. In the meantime, the opposition, that does not want to run the risk that an unconstitutional way out -or one made possible by a possible Kirchnerist decision to hand over the symbols of power after convening a legislative assembly- from the quagmire in which the country has gotten itself would mean, will continue preparing slowly to take on a situation that is sure to be decidedly worse than the current one. It’s not quite easy for him; sooner or later, he will have to commit to measures that would scare the bulk of the electorate.
The end of the cycle that began almost twenty years ago is complicated by the personal situation of who has been its protagonist. Since the death of Néstor Kirchner in October 2010, Kirchnerism has depended on the charisma attributed to Cristina Kirchner. It is the glue that has held it together. For the faithful, the lady has been a kind of popess, not only a political but also a spiritual leader who must be trusted, but lately the aura of infallibility that she has been able to radiate among her supporters has become less intense. Deprived of it, Cristina will be nothing more than a common politician, one like those leaders who for a long time perhaps benefited from the widespread conviction that they were different from the others but who, without really understanding the reasons, ended up despised. by those who had idolized them. This is what happened to Carlos Menem, the “best president since Perón” in the opinion of Nestor in 1994.
For the former president recycled into an almighty vice president, the disappearance of the mysterious charisma that for more than a decade allowed her to dominate the political scene is having traumatic consequences that affect her behavior. She is not given to get away from the worldly noise to dedicate herself to writing her memoirs. He has no choice but to defend the “space” which she occupies by any means because any manifestation of weakness will bring her closer to jail for crimes she committed when a substantial part of the country’s population, and herself, considered her above the law. Unfortunately for Christinathe evidence against him is overwhelming and there are fewer and fewer who pretend to believe that the accusations he faces are based on “lawfare” promoted by the enemies of the popular cause.
As it could not be otherwise, Cristina’s desperate struggle to preserve the power that she still has in the midst of a devastating economic storm that deposits thousands of people in poverty every day, makes the outlook for the country even darker. Despite being regularly humiliated by whoever opened the doors of the Casa Rosada for him, the incumbent president continues to be more concerned with appeasing her than with trying to curb inflation or stimulate the ailing “productive sector” on which everything else depends.
To the frustration of those around him, Alberto Fernández has resigned himself to the fact that Cristina deprives him of the support of the official picketers of Emilio Pérsico’s Evita Movement, which, of course, does not want the mayors of the suburbs to administer the subsidies financed by taxpayers that the State gives to those who “work” for it by making numbers in street demonstrations. Other piquetero leaders who share her point of view have begun to directly oppose the vice president, treating her as a sworn enemy of the poor. It is what she has done to her with her usual fury, Luis D’Elía, accusing her of “treason”.
To add more voices to the chorus of those who are ranting against what they see as an attempt to deprive them of a valuable piece of political loot with the purpose of obtaining the interested support of the Buenos Aires mayors and some provincial governors, Cristina may lose the support of the poor of the suburbs that make up a very significant proportion of its electoral capital. Although it may turn out to be a good deal for him, especially if it allows him to reconcile with those who are fed up with having to put up with the almost daily encampments and street protests organized by “social movements”, the maneuver entails many risks. To further increase the rate of repudiation who boasts that, according to the most recent polls, is already close to seventy percent, he would lose the informal privileges, which matter to him as much as the institutional ones, which have allowed him to flout Justice. For Cristina, said index is key; Unless she gets better soon, some Kirchnerist militants, as well as those Peronists who have never loved her but have respected her ability to supply them with the votes they need, might conclude that it would be in everyone’s interest for the Supreme Court to determine their fate.
Although “the doctor” understands very well that her own future is linked to that of the national economy, he has no idea what the government he set up could do to postpone the collapse so that it happens when others are in power. Even so, he does not hesitate to order Alberto and Martín Guzmán to try their luck with forceful measures, hence the attempt to hinder imports and ensure that it is even more difficult for ordinary people to get a few dollars. It refuses to understand that, without inputs from abroad, the economy will not be able to function.
Also, like other supporters of the nac&pop cause, Cristina allowed himself to be convinced that printing astronomical amounts of banknotes – now they are decorated with portraits of a more inclusive selection of heroes than in other times – is innocuous because inflation it is not a monetary phenomenon but a “multi-causal” one. Unfortunately, reality says otherwise. Despite the resolutely heterodox, worrying about issues such as the emission and the fiscal deficit is not a perverse right-wing mania. Is the vice president about to change her mind? It’s possible; It would be surprising if professional economists like Martín Redrado and, recently, Charles Melconian, with whom she has been in dialogue, have not tried to convince her that it would not be in her best interest to continue clinging to the old populist script of her protégé Axel Kicillof. It would not be surprising, then, if one fine day Cristina, impressed by the popularity achieved in record time by the libertarian Javier Milei, emulated Menem and began to speak like a lifelong neoliberal for supposing that only in this way could she reconnect with those who had voted in 2011 when he swept the presidential elections. After all, that is what the Chinese communists did forty years ago, with stunning success.
In any case, Cristina remains a prisoner of her own past. and, largely thanks to its continued protagonism but also to the rigidity that is characteristic of the Constitution, so is the country. For many Kirchnerists, especially for those who long ago ceased to be wonderful young people, Argentina took a wrong path in the seventies of the last century and therefore has to retrace its steps and start all over again, without being disturbed. the fact that since then the world has been radically transformed.
Among other things, today virtually all governments, be they conservative, centrist or left-wing, take inflation very seriously; they tend to prefer that the local economy enters a recession than to tolerate an annual rate that here would be considered merely anecdotal because they understand that without monetary stability nothing can work well. To make matters worse, from his point of view, the evident inability of the Argentine political class to defend the value of the national currency is a symptom of a debilitating disease that manifests itself in other areas of national life.
They are right: the economic debacle, the educational catastrophe, the citizen insecurity and the political paralysis that, basically, are due to the lack of mental rigor of those who play the most influential roles, are closely related. Under the pretext that demanding more from those who occupy important positions not only in the State but also in other sectors would be unpopular, not to say anti-democratic, society has been allowed to be dominated by improvisers who have made an ideology of easy and short-termism that lend themselves to slogans that, for many, are irresistible, which is why the country is about to sink.
