No one would dream of denying that Alberto Fernandez be the legitimate president of the Republic. Sometimes, he tries to behave as such, but it happens that for almost everyone he is just a minor actor in the official cast who, like a precursor, Isabelita, with whom he has a lot in common, exerts less real influence than some characters who surround. He lacks what the Romans called “gravitas.”
And Christina? Since she has lately reduced the notable power that she once had, she also does not possess the aura of authority that a real ruler usually needs. Also, although the situation Sergio Massa is another, the ambitious circumstantial ally of the Fernández who tried to establish himself as the strong man of a government that was in danger of disintegrating is losing political weight at a disconcerting speed. As for the other members of the selected ruler, Axel Kiciloff, Máximo Kirchner, Wado de Pedro, Juan Manzur and companyThey are secondary figures that have nothing to be presidential.
At first glance, the opposition does have a surplus of presidential candidates. In addition to the more firmly installed, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta and Patricia BullrichThere are Mauricio Macri, Elisa Carrió, Facundo Manes, Gerardo Morales, Martín Lousteau and a long etcetera that continues to grow.
While those of Juntos por el Cambio operate in the same ecosystem as their adversaries, not to say enemies, of the Frente de Todos, they find themselves threatened by the ultra javier milei which is even more of an opposition, since it swears to be determined to completely destroy the existing political order, believing it to be the redoubt of an execrable “caste”. The fierce libertarian has made his own the “que se vayan todos” cry that was briefly popularized by the collapse of convertibility, the colossal disaster that set the stage for the current multifaceted crisis. After laying low until the storm subsided, “everyone” would return; as Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, they neither learned nor forgot anything from what had happened to them.
Will the eventual winner of the elections scheduled for October be able to restore presidential authority? It is not a minor detail. Unless he succeeds, Argentina will continue rolling downhill. Although no one would like the country to be governed by a character who, like the Frenchman Emmanuel Macron, imagines a “jupiterian” leader above ordinary mortals, it is necessary that he deserves to be treated with respect.
It would be difficult to exaggerate the damage that the tragicomedy starring Alberto is doing to the country, a man who in the opinion of many lacks principles and who, when he is not reopening a small square or celebrating the paving of a street in the suburbs, says he believes that inflation is a psychological phenomenonthat the national economy is expanding at a rate that is the envy of all other countries with the possible exception of China, which is so prosperous that people queue for hours at the most frequented restaurants.
It would seem that Alberto clings to the hope that, soon, the citizenry will wake up and, realizing that the terrible crisis about which so much is talked about was only a nightmare, will choose to allow him to continue occupying the Pink House. It’s a nice dream but, unfortunately for him, and for the country, it’s nothing more than a fantasy.
The fact that so many members of Juntos por el Cambio believe they are in a position to govern a nation as complicated as Argentina with solvency is in itself worrying. Unless the coalition is an inexhaustible pool of unrecognized political talent, the proliferation of candidates raises the suspicion that most grossly underestimate the magnitude of the task that awaits whoever is elected. Not only will you have to make many extremely difficult decisions that they will be brutally criticized for those affected, but also to convince the bulk of the population that they fully understand the situation in which the country finds itself and that the measures it wants to apply are the most appropriate.
Even when there is a consensus that the corporatist “model” to which virtually everyone has become accustomed has failed and therefore must be replaced by another that is compatible with economic development and search for a higher degree of social justice, there is no agreement on what would have to be sacrificed for the proposed reforms to have positive consequences.
Much will depend on the climate in which the inmates are held, which in the coming months will keep the members of the Together for Change. If too many fall into the temptation of discrediting their opponents by covering them with insults, they will only succeed in discrediting the man or woman who emerges victorious from the fight. It may be that, as usual in the political world, the participants ask us to forget the atrocities that some will have pronounced when they were competing, but, given that nowadays everything that is said is recorded and could be disseminated universally at any time, they should take care of themselves. .
Although Alberto’s case is extreme, the abundance of videos in which, after leaving the Kirchner government, he lashed out at Cristina, treating her as a corrupt, “cynically delusional” lunatic, effectively guaranteed that his rise to power after “reconciling ” with the then former president would be considered farcical from the start and that its own management would be born deformed.
Happily for Juntos por el Cambio, the primary season has started off fairly quietly. Despite the efforts of the national leaders of the UCR and the PRO To underline its importance, the internal election that was held in La Pampa passed without unpleasant episodes. Although the radical candidate prevailed, one could say that the real winner was absenteeism; barely 13% of those qualified showed up to vote, which must have been partly due to the suffocating heat that prevailed throughout the country and partly to the feeling that what was at stake was of interest only to those who live from politics.
As the result of the Pampean conflict has just reminded us, it is still difficult for the PRO to establish itself outside of the Federal Capital. Unlike radicalism, which, when it comes to getting charges, is benefited by an impressive number of genetic co-religionists scattered throughout the national territory, it is in the eyes of many a new group and therefore alien. At a time when the old politics, if not politics itself, motivates the repudiation of broad sectors, such an image should be advantageous to him, but the truth is that it harms him in the internal battle that he is waging against his main partner in which the party loyalties often far outweigh ideological preferences. After all, there are radicals like Alfredo Cornejo – the one who, judging by what he says about the “non-working parasites” represented by Kirchnerism – who is as tough as any PRO hawk, while, due to his willingness to To ingratiate himself with everyone, Rodríguez Larreta could be a member of the most sentimental wing of the UCR without problems.
Given that there are still more than eight months left before the country can finally get out of the prolonged political torpor that has meant the impossibility of getting rid of a government prematurely exhausted and without ideas that, to justify its existence, has made From the search for impunity for Cristina, her only reason for being, a lot can change in the time that separates us from the elections. The socioeconomic strategy chosen by the next government will depend more on the prevailing circumstances in the last days of the year than on the positions currently assumed by those aspiring to lead it. If before the elections, or soon after, everything collapses, he will have no choice but to undertake a series of drastic changes, but if the economy does not suffer a collapse similar to so many that have marked the country’s history with fire, it could try a new version of gradualism.
Macri is not the only one who attributes his defeat in 2019 to his initial willingness to bet that his presence in the Casa Rosada would cause a tsunami of investments. He believes he has learned from that mistake and, if he chooses to apply for a “second term”, he would surely affirm that he is willing to immediately take unsympathetic measures that, hopefully, will bear fruit before his hypothetical management finally approaches. Would it be in his or, more importantly, the country’s interest to try his luck again? Those who doubt it point out that, in addition to surpassing the other candidates in the space that he contributed so much to creating, Macri would have to fight against the many who do not want him for reasons that have less to do with what he did in power than with his last name. , that is, with the reputation of his father. From their point of view, it would be better for him to settle for the role of statesman emeritus that corresponds to him for having been one of the very few politicians -others would be Juan Domingo Perón and Hipólito Yrigoyen- who knew how to articulate a government party capable of survive them.
by James Neilson
