Strange country, Argentina. Although he is in danger of falling into an abyss, his political leaders give the impression of not being too concerned about what is happening to him. Rather, they seem to be more interested in the internals of their respective groups than in wondering what would be necessary to do to spare the country the tragic destiny that could be its in the immediate future. Although such an attitude can be understood, since for many members of the national political class, their own place in the world will depend on the evolution of the internal one in which they are participating, for others it is a form of escapism. They want “the leaders” to present coherent programs as soon as possible, road maps that would tell them clearly what path they would take if one day they came to power and thus help make the climate of uncertainty that covers the entire territory less suffocating. national. Is it too much to ask? From the point of view of most politicians, it is; they fear that proposals that take into account the unpleasant reality would harm them. Reluctant to take chances, what many want is for the country to pay tribute to them for what they have done, or promised to do, in the past.
Thus, in a nostalgic vein, Cristina spoke of the “joy” that according to her people felt in times gone by when Kirchnerism triumphed in the elections and there was still the “illusion” that the working people would get everything they thought they deserved. It was as if the lady was trying to write her own political obituary, but to her supporters it resembled the prologue to an election manifesto.
Is the vice president determined to run again? Although his advisers believe that it would be better for him to settle for a senatorship that would give him the privileges that he will surely need, the faithful are enthusiastic about the idea that the boss, armed with the magical powers attributed to her, will manage to rewind history to revive the “happy” country of ten or more years ago. They dream of confronting once again the satanic engineer Mauricio Macri who, for his part, keeps his sympathizers on the alert by insinuating that he would like to resume the task that he left unfinished almost three years ago.
Living in the past has its attractions. In Argentina, which is a country whose political culture is extremely conservative and which for more than a hundred years has resisted adapting to the changes that would gradually modify the world panorama, few people are immune to its charms. All the political forces have their eyes fixed on a historical stage that seems golden to them or, what is more frequent, full of illusions; the radicals claim times when there were white berets everywhere, the Peronists to those starring shirtless men who put their feet in oligarchic sources or, in the case of the Kirchnerists, those in which Montoneros, so romantic they, sowed terror.
In another corner of the ideological map, there are those who tenderly remember “the generation of the 80s”, from the 19th century, while the macristas prefer to dwell on more recent periods, before trying to govern Argentina taught them that making the country change heading would not be as easy as they had imagined.
While successes are often celebrated in other parts of the world, here those with memories try to revive in their imaginations the optimism that many felt before resigning themselves to the failure of a particular project. There are so many utopias, or pre-utopias that turned out to be unattainable, and the great current problems seem so difficult to overcome, that the general will to share for a while the illusions of the putative intellectual ancestors of each one can be considered natural, but for being So serious are the prevailing circumstances, perhaps it would be better for politicians to leave the past in the hands of historians to concentrate on what the next government would have to do to repair the damage done by one that has completely separated itself from the bulk of society but who, even so, is forced to continue occupying positions of power.
If the political system were parliamentary, a government of Together for Change would already be paying the costs of the first year of a very arduous administration and the Peronist opposition would be making an effort to take advantage of the alleged mistakes of others and convince citizens that they had learned from the but, needless to say, it is presidential, so that the country has had to put up with an administration manipulated by a faction that has already been repudiated by the electorate for a couple more years.
The anomalous situation thus assumed has benefited no one. By driving the centrifugal tendencies of both the Front for All and Together for Change, it has weakened both coalitions and provided libertarians, who want to wipe virtually everything clean, with opportunities to treat them as two parts of a single political corporation. parasitic, “the caste”, whose members help each other by inventing more and more positions to be distributed among their colleagues, their relatives and their friends. In the United States, Brazil and other countries, the preaching of those who are dissatisfied with the performance of traditional groups has had disconcerting consequences by allowing the leading role of characters as scandalously heterodox as Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, but here, until now, their equivalents have managed remain more or less intact.
There is no doubt that Together for Change has been harmed by internalism. Although the differences between the official sects are greater than those that are motivating confrontations between those of the coalition formed by the PRO, the UCR, the Civic Coalition and some Peronists such as Miguel Ángel Pichetto, the opposition was expected to offer a more disciplined alternative to a society that is tired of attending disputes between egomaniacs who privilege their personal interests above everything else.
The show offered by Together for Change has caused some optimism among Peronists who months ago seemed convinced that it was already written that their movement would be crushed in the elections scheduled for October 27 next year. Be that as it may, although judging by the polls, Alberto, Cristina and Sergio Massa will be fooling themselves if they bet that people will change their minds in the coming months when they realize that they are not as bad as many say, they are holding on to hope. that their main opponents manage to sink.
In politics, it is often very dangerous to fall into the temptation of proclaiming victory prematurely, as the supporters of Together for Change did when they chose to dedicate themselves to inmates in which loyalty to certain characters outweighs alleged ideological discrepancies. Even though the brawls between the macristas and their opponents have not helped the Kirchnerists much, they have contributed to the rise in the actions of those who base their message on the contempt they say they feel for the political class as a whole. If, as many fear, the economy collapses in the coming months, the frantic search for a saving alternative could blow up not only the ruling party but also the coalition of those who believe they are predestined to take its place.
The prospects for the national economy are ominous. The Central Bank is a sieve; once again, it is losing bookings at an alarming rate. The countryside will have a hard time recovering from the impact of the prolonged drought that has just devastated it. What remains of the industry is affected by the lack of foreign currency it needs to import inputs. To disguise the devaluation process that is underway, Massa does not stop creating new exchange rates; there are dollars for all tastes except those of the already poor who are trying to survive the inflationary tsunami that is destroying millions of family budgets. Behind all this is the far from arbitrary feeling that the barely symbolic government formally headed by Alberto has lost control because it has become disconnected from the real country.
Massa may have delayed for a few months the collapse that seemed imminent in the weeks that followed the resignation of Martín Guzmán, but it already seems unlikely that he will be able to postpone it until a government of another sign has inherited it, as those Kirchnerists who are reluctant would like. to lower the thumb. It is a variant of the strategy that was chosen by generations of Peronists; they understood that they could take advantage of their own ineptitude by handing over a broken economy to a military regime that, in time, would become so odious that people would forget the shortcomings of those who had gone before. It was with the purpose of recreating the mood of those times that the Kirchnerists and their friends chanted “Macri garbage, you are the dictatorship.” Locked away in the metaverse that they themselves have created, Cristina and her parishioners continue to refuse to enter the world that actually exists and in which, unfortunately for some, legal norms govern that are very different from those made by Kirchnerist thinkers.
