It is the first day since Alberto Fernandez He returned from a European tour that surprised even his own. “It was without an agenda and took more journalists than ministers”, he said, when the president undertook the trip, one of the twenty people who hold that rank. The balance of the journey through the old continent was bittersweet: the President met with top international figures such as his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, but in the middle he fell prey to his own media whirlwind and had to go out and deny the re-election attempt that he himself had announced earlier. He was a blooper who generated fights, but now the one who is angry is him.
Those who heard the conversation he had with Martin Guzman at noon on Saturday the 14th they say it was spicy: the President harshly reproached him the public snub that his economy minister had given to Sergio Massa. “It’s obvious,” Stiglitz’s disciple had replied to the Tigrense’s request to update the minimum non-taxable Earnings, in what was a tease which was on the verge of becoming a full-scale brawl. Although the reply was due to the tone used by the economist, the problem was the underlying issue: with an ruling party internally split in the middle with the K, the president can no longer afford to fight with another leg.
The scene, Alberto’s challenge to one of the few officials who respond to him, reveals a reality: there is not a single government. There are many. And with something as insignificant as a bad phrase said in public, everything can explode.
Pink. Cristina and Alberto are about spend three months without speaking among them. Máximo and the president, even more so. The emissaries among them have already desisted from that rapprochement. “I am an expert in defeats”, is a phrase used by deputy Eduardo Valdés, once a communicating vessel between the two, to portray the situation with irony. And the old idea of setting up a political table or “institutionalizing” the Front is about to be shelved. “Until Cristina lowers her tone or stops bashing, I’m not going to put anything together,” repeats the President, putting into words what a party government means. Nicolás Trotta, the former Minister of Education who left after the post PASO crisis, is even more succinct: “There are many public discussions and there are few decisions that are adopted. The decision scheme needs to be institutionalized, and that is inexcusable and the responsibility lies with the President”, is a reflection that he often repeats.
Wrapped in old fights that have now reappeared, pursued by new fights that seem to have existed forever, the Front of All is buried in the mud inside and cannot come out. 2023 is getting closer and Alberto’s defiant invitation for a STEP not only does not calm the fire but makes it grow. In the middle there is a government bogged down and crossed by mistrust.
“Perhaps from the outside it is not visible or it seems that it is only a discussion for the little soccer, but On a day-to-day basis, this is unbearable, very busy”, says an official with an office in the Casa Rosada. The situation that he depicts is vox populi within the ruling party: as almost all the ministries are split between the different forces – to give an example, Social Development is run by Juan Zabalata, a furious Albertista, and has secretaries who belong to La Cámpora and others to the social movements-, when an official needs something from a peer but from another tribe, the situation gets bogged down. “The campers try to bypass the Albertites and vice versa, and when they can’t, they put together puzzles of personal relationships, an endless round of calls to see who can get someone to unblock the situation,” says the man. And there is already a lottery. To illustrate: in the mass movement they are convinced that Guzmán and his ministry purposely “steps” on the laws that they take out of Congress with the signature of the Renovating Front. “Look how long it took to regulate Earnings, months. He does it on purpose because he is bad with Sergio, “they say. This scene, of personal fights that paralyze the routine, is repeated in each area of the Government.
And it is a reality that ministers also suffer. In the last Cabinet meeting on Thursday 19 there were two who raised their voices to call for a political discussion. The meeting was routine, bordering on boring (except for the absence of Matías Lammens, from Tourism, who for the second time in a row did not show up, a mistake that his peers noticed even when the former president of San Lorenzo had a work agenda from his portfolio ) until two of the officials asked to have some kind of debate, instead of continuing to review the agenda of each portfolio. “It is that we lack political debate, and we gather there as if the Front were not on fire,” says a privileged witness. It was not the only point of the meeting: almost all the ministers are beginning to look with concern at the numbers in their portfolios and are impatient with Guzmán’s delay in issuing a decree that gives them more funds. As the 2022 Budget was never approved, the numbers were not updated and -with 58% inflation through- the ministers say they are on the verge of red numbers. “At this rate, in June we can’t pay the light”, counts the right hand of a minister, while the anger points towards the adjustment imposed by the agreement with the IMF.
Routine. Although all eyes tend to fall on the darts that Kirchnerism throws daily, the truth is that management had been disconnected since before the crisis due to the arrangement with the Fund. The Vicentin case -in which neither the Minister of Agriculture nor the governor of the province where the bankrupt company was located were aware of the failed expropiation before it was publicly announced-, the affair between Guzmán and Federico Basualdo -a witness who was in the Undersecretary of Energy when the news spread that Guzmán had fired him swears that he saw the secretary literally run to CFK’s office in the Senate-, or the stampede of K resignations that led to Alberto not speaking to your interior minister, Peter’s “Wado”, for a semester, realize this. That is why all eyes are on Alberto, beyond the jerking K.
The links of the ruling party with China almost fainted when they heard the President, in an interview in Germany, say that he was “better with Europe than with China, because China has no cultural ties with Latin America.” “China is today our second trading partner, it was the first in 2020 and Alberto says this nonsense. The worst thing is that he sends himself, not that the journalist asked him. She always does this nonsense of telling her interlocutor what he wants to hear, ”says an official who works on this bilateral relationship. Then came the announcement that he would “absolutely” seek re-election only to repent the next day. There Alberto has a half pathological thingyou have to go to Europe to be encouraged to answer Cristina for the first time”, laments one of the presidential friends.
In the middle of the crossroads, Alberto and his people move, in management, without asking permission from the K. The failed “war against inflation” was a 100 percent Albertist work, as well as the agreement with the Fund. In the economic area, the President is in charge, while rumors are growing that an empowered Guzmán would absorb the Secretary of Domestic Trade led by Roberto Feletti into his portfolio.
Is there 2023? But Black also moves. Those who speak with Cristina say that she does not even try to get into management, and in fact she seeks to show herself as far away from the Government as possible. She “she She is taking care of her vows, thinking of retaining the province of Buenos Aires. Y Máximo is already talking about 2027”, they count. Several in her environment are already confident with the CFK senator’s thesis, but they never cease to be surprised that her son is thinking about the elections following next year’s. “I think she is losing the axis. Does he not realize that if we lose they are going to come looking for us to put us in jail? ”, Says a friend of his, an official. The thesis of assured defeat, held by the K, also impacts day to day: from the Legislature, where Christianity can still be noted, laws are issued that seek to corner Guzmán’s political program.
In addition, CFK’s speech in Chaco, beyond fueling “the discussion of ideas”, indirectly affected management. That was the straw that overflowed Alberto’s patience, who for the first time ordered his ministers to answer the darts, a task to which he himself later joined, in Europe. “It seems not, but sometimes we spend half the morning giving notes and seeing the rebound that the debate has in the media,” says a ministerial sidekick. From Kirchnerism, they also prophesy that the attempt to detach from the administration will only increase, while maintaining the delicate balance of launching criticism without giving up the boxes. The “let’s go back” has already begun to be heard in the K acts, a song that, say those who speak with the President, irritates him greatly.
bogged down The retreat K encloses in itself the decline of the Front of All. From an electoral coalition to defeat Macri, they were transformed into a dysfunctional government, which after counting its ribs in public promised that it could continue managing reality beyond the internal one. “Management, management and management”, the officials repeated as a mantra, after the implosion of the agreement with the Fund, as the guide for a political reconstruction that never came. At this point, fulfilling that promise already seems impossible.
