October 20, 2015, America TV. The protagonist of this note is sitting at the table “Stray animals”to the right of Alexander Fantine. The host introduces her:Silvina Batakis, which has been talked about a lot in the last few hours. You google your name and you have 200 results in news, that means you are on the top of all the newspapers. Nice little hot iron you grab! Are you comfortable with what you are going to receive?”
batakis He answers evasively, saying that the economy “is always conflictive” and that the first thing he will do, when he takes office, is “think about the medium and long term.”
I spoke for those hot days like the future economy minister of Daniel Scioli, the candidate who ended up losing by just one point against Mauricio Macri. She was a fixture in the Cabinet of the former motonaut -she had already held the same position in the Buenos Aires administration-, but in the end it did not happen.
They count by their side batakis suffered a very strong blow after that defeat because he did not have plan B. Her dream was to be a minister or nothing. She only thought about economic programs and plans to, at that time, settle with the holdouts. All that disappeared in November, on the night of the ballotage, and she had to go to her house. Her life changed to such an extent that she even separated from the father of her child.
Now she did reach the place that was denied her seven years ago, this time in the version of emergency minister, or discarded, after the careless exit of Martin Guzman. Batakis lives it as a revenge. Or, as a collaborator of his extreme confidence says, as “a vindication”.
But the markets received it with distrust. And the numbers that she has to handle burn.
Shocked
When he got to Ministry of Economy, Batakis He found himself in a more complex situation than he expected. Four days after taking office, he still hadn’t been able to form his entire team. The transcended in Pink House in fact they realized of the “shock” in which it was immersed. It is that Batakis, a solid economist with knowledge of the State and the public function, and with good acceptance by Peronism and the governors, did not have a sufficient number of collaborators available to fill all the boxes of the Ministry of Economy. The Ministry of Finance by itself is a “monster” in terms of its organization chart. And the formation of the Legal and Technical area entails a complexity that, according to sources, batakis It took longer than expected to resolve. For example, the current Secretary of Finance, Eduardo Setti, Until recently he was an advisor to Sergio Massa and in the past he worked for Miguel Ángel Pichetto.
The nerves consume her for these hours. And to top it off, in her first statements she has stumbled, like when she was asked about the restrictions on access to dollars and trips abroad. “People have the right to travel”, Marcelo Bonelli told him. “The issue is that this right to travel collides or stresses with the generation of jobs.” After viralizing that statement, it was leaked that her son had traveled to London after the assumption of his mother, for a school activity with academic institutions in England.
How did you get to the Government? One of the influential men in the Casa Rosada with whom Batakis has a good relationship is santiago cafiero. The chancellor recommended it to the interior minister Eduardo “Wado” DePedro when he consulted him for economists to add to his portfolio. In other words, that fateful weekend in Olivos, in which it was decided who would replace Guzman, Batakis already had a vote in favor. To this was added the recommendation of Miguel Pesce, the president of the Central Bank, who was the one who put his name on the table. She found out on Saturday through the media. She was at her house and called a couple of friends to ask what they thought. Once again, she returned to feel the possibility of being Minister of Economy.
A close colleague contacted her to ask her to turn off her cell phone throughout Sunday and give her a landline to locate her in case of an emergency. Her name already had the consensus of Alberto Fernandez, Sergio Massa and Cristina Kirchner, but they wanted to prevent journalists or other officials from harassing her with questions and wait until they made it official.
At 6 p.m. on Sunday they told him that he could turn on the phone and the first call that came in was from Daniel Scioli, who told him that Santiago Cafiero I was looking for her. The chancellor wanted to inform her that she had been chosen for the Ministry. Something striking: why didn’t the chief of staff inform him? Is Cafiero a blue chief of staff?
History of Batakis
After the disenchantment due to the sciolist defeat in 2015, for which she did not become a minister that time, Batakis returned to militancy with colleagues such as Silvia Gotero, deceased’s wife Robert Dign, Through whom he approached the political life of Boca Juniors, the club of his loves and the one he used to go to see in the middle stalls B, row 4 every time he played at home in the Bombonera. Now it will be more difficult.
Another member of militancy is María Rosa Muiños, former Buenos Aires legislator and current Ombudsman of the City of Buenos Aires. Muiños is also the wife of Juan Manuel Olmos, the chief adviser to Alberto Fernández and founder of the New Participation Space (NEP). In the Macri years, in addition to advising Mayor Julio Pereyra of Florencia Varela, Batakis collaborated with Claudia Neri, who was director of Banco Ciudad and today is a Buenos Aires legislator for the NEP. This network of connections makes Olmos another godfather of the minister.
During those years on the plain, “La Griega” -as they call her by her last name, and because the island of Crete is her place in the world- had a hit that put her back on the public scene: from her Twitter account criticized the indebtedness of the government of Macri and his threads with graphics and technical soundness became arguments for the then opposition. Thus, she became a constant guest on C5N, which in those years led the media resistance of Kirchnerism.
Since his youth, militancy did not generate so much adrenaline. The only difference is that at the end of the 1980s, when he was studying economics at the University of La Plata, he was not a member of the Peronist Youth, but in Purple Stripthe university arm of UCRand was even a candidate in the elections for the Student Center, in 1988.
the paper
Batakis, like most economy ministers in recent years, joins a project in a crisis and emergency situation. She is aware of this because, as the daily Perfil published, she was already working on a paper with ideas for an economic plan that she was going to present to Cristina Kirchner. “La Griega” had asked for reports from economists she trusted, on topics such as inflation, tariffs and the dollar.
The link to CFK is ambiguous. In the past, Batakis suffered punishment from the government K against Governor Daniel Scioli when Cristina was president. From Kirchnerism Scioli was lambasted and funds were withheld to pay salaries in the Province. In mid-2012 she had to pay the Christmas bonus in installments. One of the things they blamed on Scioli was that he mismanaged the province. The administrator was Batakis. Today, Cristina accompanies in abstention mode. She does not speak, she does not give her opinion and at the close of this edition she had barely had a few telephone conversations with Batakis about the measures that were announced last Monday, July 11.
Cristina’s silence is interpreted as a period of grace granted to her so as not to cause premature wear and tear on the new official. As the measures progress, she will adopt a more -or less- verbose attitude about Batakis’ management. Today he does not give anything away. Neither officials. The week of the inauguration, a leak circulated in the corridors of Casa Rosada that could be confirmed: the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, distanced himself from the appointment of the minister. There were no advisers from the camporismo who went on to integrate the teams of the former secretary of Provinces of the Ministry of the Interior, whose replacement is almost confirmed in the figure of Paula Español.
The most insistent version of this “emptying” of From Pedro to the Ministry of Economy is that Kirchnerism does not see good results in the short and medium term, and does not want to be stuck with the Batakis administration. It should be remembered that in the early days of the current government, Guzmán was one of the ministers who enjoyed a good relationship with Cristina. The heat of the crisis diluted the bond. In this aspect, Batakis has some points in his favor: he is a Peronist, he is a militancy and has already been in situations of tension with Kirchnerism in the past. He knows them.
In this new stage, friendly fire does not come from the Government itself, but from part of the ruling party. Among the critics are the social leader Juan Grabois, the leader of the CTA Hugo Yasky and also the unionist of the truckers Paul Moyano. The last two said that Batakis’s announcements “were for the markets and not for the people,” while Grabois argued that “if the minister is aligned with the ideas that Cristina Kirchner put forward, she should be working for the Universal Basic Wage or measures redistributive”. A week after her appointment they were already marking the field for her.
The likes of Batakis
Batakis has an underexplored frivolous side. She is a fan of dresses to the point that because of the amount she has, they don’t all fit in one closet. In 2012, she told in an interview that she had to remove a toilet from her house to put up a rail and hang more dresses. She likes different colors and designs. She is a specialist. “Dresses can do me,” she told La Tecla magazine at the time. Something similar happens with glasses. If you look at the photos of the first weeks of work you can notice that she has different colors of frames in combination with the dresses and the same goes for the accessories. For the announcement on Monday the 11th, the first business day after the anniversary of Independence, she was seen wearing a brooch in the shape of a blue and white butterfly that served as a rosette. In her Facebook account she has a photo of her collection of national badges and brooches.
In addition to dealing with the economy, one of his biggest challenges will be surviving the government’s internship. She arrives with the legitimacy of the consensus that was formed to appoint her minister. This gives you a grace period until the management begins to take effect. The main problem it has is that within the Government two administration models coexist that collide with each other and that were made evident by the agreement with the IMF. Today they all support it, but if the management fails, these pillars, with the passing of days, will suffer cracks. And he no longer has the intellectual support that he had during his management with Scioli, the economist Alejandro Arlía and the accountant Rafael Perelmiter. They both died.
With Scioli he spoke little or nothing. But the week before the resignation he had a sign. The newly arrived Minister of Production called her to consult about the economic situation. They spoke on Monday, June 27 at 11 p.m. She took care of him and gave him her opinion without addressing him once. It’s about “you”.
Batakis was not the government’s first choice. He was fourth, behind Martín Redrado, Emmanuel Álvarez Agis and Marco Lavagna. Still, it feels like a rematch to her. Or put more elegantly: a vindication.
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