Once again, the question of the moment is: what is Cristina up to? It is that for almost twenty years, Argentina has been a theatrical stage for the episodes of a soap opera in which the protagonist, a pretty, cunning, calculating and very resentful from Tolosa, a town in La Plata, manages to become the most powerful and, they say, the wealthiest person in the country.
It has been a captivating series, full of exciting alternatives, there is no doubt about that, but the production costs have been so enormous that the bulk of those forced to finance it -they number in the tens of millions- have been reduced to misery . But although everything suggests that a growing majority feels fed up with having to continue attending a show that has become repetitive and waits impatiently for the denouement, the star, Cristina, refuses to terminate it. To the delight of her remaining fans, she insists that the best is yet to come.
is it? Despite her regret, it would seem that from now on the vice president will have to play the unpleasant role that the Greek playwrights reserved for those heroes and heroines who defied the rules that, in their opinion, governed human conduct. One way or another, she will face Nemesis, the goddess who is in charge of punishing the proud who refuse to respect divine rules.
Like many temporarily successful politicians, Cristina climbed to the top taking advantage of the grudge of those who believed they had been betrayed by life, those who, in the Argentina of cyclical crises that ruin one sector after another, make up a good part of the population. However, in addition to allowing it to conquer the will of a substantial part of society, the fight it undertook against different aspects of the national and international status quo distanced it from legality, which ensured that, sooner or later, it would have to be held accountable before Human Justice. Although nothing is written, it is expected that soon the lady will begin to be sentenced to years behind bars for what she did when she imagined herself above the law since she, as she reported to those magistrates so insolent of the Federal Oral Court 2 that, in December 2019, they believed they were in a position to question her, she trusted that “History” would dictate a very benevolent sentence.
In what could be interpreted as an attempt to save herself from the fate predicted by those who don’t love her and, meanwhile, prolong the soap opera that has recently lost its audience for a while longer, Cristina is trying to reinvent herself. It’s what experienced actresses do to stay on the billboard. Since it is absolutely not convenient for her to represent the status quo of an increasingly poor society that is on the verge of disintegrating, the vice president of a government that she herself dominates wants to appropriate the role that she attributes to Mauricio Macri, that of leader of the opposition.
In that strange carnival act – enlivened by the waddling of a bouncing Quilmeña jumper – of “Militancy Day” that was held a little over a week ago in a packed stadium in her hometown, Cristina spoke like a presidential candidate who was resolute to carry out drastic changes that would once again make Argentina a happy country, brimming with hopeful illusions, as according to her it was when she dreamed of going for everything. Although few believe that he would risk an election in which, according to the polls, he would suffer a humiliating defeat, some assume that what he wants to do is remind the other Peronists that he is still more popular than any other comrade and therefore not it would be in his interest to leave her to her fate.
Will they match? It would be surprising if there were many who decided that, given the circumstances, empathizing with Cristina would be the least bad option. Although the Kirchnerists promise to make the Province of Buenos Aires an impregnable redoubt with a multitude of political positions available to the militancy, there is no guarantee that the electorate will collaborate with what they have proposed. As long as the Together for Change candidates manage to reassure those they suspect of wanting to bonfire the subsidies, which would plunge millions into destitution, they could regain control of key territory.
Naturally, skeptics were laughed at by the vice president’s efforts to convince everyone that she was indeed leading the opposition to her own government. They treated her as crazy, schizophrenic, irrational, but as a matter of a character whose many political successes are due in large part to her hostility towards the world as it is, her willingness to return to what she takes for her natural place can be understood. . Nowadays, rising up in rebellion against reality is often more profitable than trying to adapt to it.
In any case, at this point Cristina will understand that she made a strategic mistake when, behind the smoke screen that Alberto provided her disguised as a sensible moderate, she returned to power at the end of 2019. It would have been much better for Macri, after having triumphed at the polls, to continue in the Casa Rosada, because out of fear of what the Kirchnerists would be capable of doing. and her allies would have been reluctant to let Justice pursue her more intensely than in the previous four years. He, too, would have had to continue running an economy that, by the way, did not offer the populists the resources they would need to continue doling out benefits to all those who might be useful to them. Although no one back then could have foreseen the pandemic that would put both the local and global economies on hold, it was clear that a Herculean task awaited the next president.
From the point of view of the ideologues of Kirchnerism, what they embody can be saved from the electoral catastrophe that so many predict if they directly oppose any measure that tastes like adjustment. The fact that the government is already his is the least of it. For them, the economic disaster that the country is suffering is a very valuable political asset that they do not intend to cede to their opponents, so it is in their interest to do everything they can to aggravate it. They assume that even if they find themselves thrown out of government and, what would be worse, lose control of “the boxes,” rebelling against all efforts to clean up national finances should give them the power to intimidate those determined to subdue her top boss to the “ultra-right” Justice that is threatening her.
In other words, Cristina’s stalwarts want to continue taking advantage of the great contradiction that, since December 1983, weakens Argentine democracy and that manifests itself through the inability of the national ruling class to reconcile political logic with economic logic. To win elections, you have to promise the impossible, as Cristina, Alberto and their collaborators did in effect in the troubled final months of the Macrista administration. Did they sincerely believe what they said back then? In the case of “the doctor”, it is feasible that yes, since she has always taken her own voluntaristic fantasies seriously, but other Peronists will have understood that it was a white lie of the type recommended by Plato because it would make the “story” more plausible. on which his power was based.
For many years, even the most lucid politicians have preferred to ignore the dilemma thus posed. Like Macri and the members of his team, they bet that, because the country’s comparative advantages are so evident, it would be enough for an apparently rational government to come to power to trigger a tsunami of investment that would save them the need to trying to apply a true setting. Although it would seem that some opponents remain convinced that “a shock policy” would have dire consequences, the reality has become so ugly that, as populist as it wants to be, the current government, or its successor, will be constrained to drastically cut spending public. Forced to choose between hyperinflation and immediate brutal adjustment, it will not be possible for him to put off reckoning for long.
This is what Sergio Massa continues to try to do, but few believe that he will be able to do it until the end of next year when, according to the electoral calendar, the citizens will pronounce their verdict on the performance of the Kirchner government. The feeling in the markets is that the days of the “plan to arrive” are numbered and that, without money, the Minister of Economy, whether Massa or another brave man, will have no alternative but to adjust. To further complicate the picture, it is conceivable that the scheme the government is trying to sustain collapses just as Alberto, who fell ill while on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, is forced to hand over the pen to whoever aspires to head the popular struggle against adjustment, an eventuality that, needless to say, would not help at all to preserve the pretense of stability that is Massa’s main achievement.
