The Renovation Front held its Congress this Saturday afternoon at the Arenas de Tortuguitas stadium, in the North Zone of the Buenos Aires suburbs. Sergio Massa made his closing speech at the event, for which the expectation for definitions grew throughout a week plagued by rumors of breakups and a deepening of the internal crisis of the Frente de Todos in view of the presentation of lists for the elections presidential elections, next Wednesday, May 14.
The Minister of Economy began by claiming his role within the Frente de Todos, positioning himself as the one who “made the homeland” by assuming his position “putting his body” in the face of the crisis that unleashed the resignation of Guzmán -his predecessor- in 2022. He not only claimed to have guaranteed the application of the adjustment, saying that “it was necessary to have a fiscal austerity criterion, and we closed the year with even better numbers than the IMF itself predicted”, cutting retirements, social plans and applying rates that fell on the vast majority . He also spoke to the employers in the countryside, recalling how he went “to embrace it to try to contain it in the face of the drought”, referring to the “soy dollar” that allowed him to transfer millions of public resources to the agro-export companies that agreed, to earn dollars in the reserves that did not last long.
on that journey spared no words when vindicating Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, for her “generosity” and “humility” in having proposed her incorporation into the Frente de Todos in 2019, as “the leader who at that time had the most votes” and “moving to one side”, to reaffirm unity as a correct decision defined and maintained for the last four years.
STEP in Front of Everyone?
“Let no one play the victim,” he said about the crosses that took place during the week between the Albertist wing of the Frente de Todos and the Frente Renovador. “We believe that the best path is unity,” he said, insisting on a single space candidacy because “subjecting a government force to a division, to a fight, is to confuse people’s direction,” but “if it is decided that there is a STEP, we will be there”. Thus, he dispelled the growing rumors about the possibility of a divided list presentation, which would isolate Scioli, forming a new electoral alliance between Massismo, Peronism, and Kirchnerism. The insistence on Daniel Scioli’s pre-candidate for the moment forced Massa to accept the scenario of competing in the PASO, which he had been rejecting for months, to be in the race to be the pre-candidate that has the support of the rest of Peronism. governors and the blessing of Cristina Kirchner. A campaign that he sought to install since his return from China this week and capped with his speech this afternoon.
He pointed directly against Scioli without naming him, saying that “others who walk around as candidates without responsibility”, in the same vein that other leaders of the Renovation Front had declared in the media during the week, to delegitimize the competition with Scioli and Alberto’s claims. Fernandez. “We are still governing and we have responsibilities,” he concluded, perhaps adjustment and repression should be counted among those responsibilities, since next to Massa were the governors Mariano Arcioni of Chubut and Gustavo Saénz of Salta, who come from brutally repressing the claims of teachers in their provinces for salary improvements.
In the competition for the electoral offer of who is the best fit, he directed darts at the opposition saying that “Together for office is putting on a gruesome show”, alluding to the ferocious inmate deployed between Bullrich-Macri and Larreta, and “another who speaks of dollarization, which speaks of freedom (…), what is behind it is adjustment with repression. Carrio is right.” If nods to more reactionary sectors were missing, the sympathy for the leader of the Civic Coalition is not accidental either. There is no doubt that Milei or Bullrich embody proposals for greater direct attacks on human and social rights, but the repressions in Salta and Chubut show that the adjustment does not go without repression, including the Front of All.
The electoral costs of the adjustment
The potential candidacy of Sergio Massa for the Frente de Todos -whether for president or elsewhere on the list- seeks to win the support of sectors of big business, finance and the IMF, competing for the electoral space that proposes an inevitable adjustment, a policy that the entire Frente de Todos has been developing with him at the head for the last year, supported by the vice president.
For this reason, in his speech, he sought to continue the nods and reinsurance to these sectors, speaking of the benefits of “resources” and “human capital” that Argentina has to offer the world, translated into more extractivism, cheap skilled labor and increased productivity. in industries such as the automotive industry, and deepen the dependency model established by agro-export employers. He said nothing about how the salary would be recomposed, nor employment with rights, or lowering the uncontrolled inflation that mainly punishes the lower-income sectors. Perhaps he understood the message that Cristina Kirchner gave in the act of last May 25 when, referring to the conflict with the countryside in 2008, she called to turn the page, as well as her insistence since last year on seeking a consensus even with sectors of the opposition to guarantee governability with adjustment.
However, if the consequences of the adjustment weigh heavily and lower the electoral possibilities of the Frente de Todos, they especially condition the possible candidacy of a Sergio Massa who wanders like a beggar through the United States, Brazil, China and any country that can lend dollars to Argentina to avoid a sharp devaluation or a chaotic leap of the economic crisis. Massa’s “merit” was to tie the wires so that the government tries to reach the elections, but he cannot show a single achievement for the great working-class and popular majorities.
Faced with the set of electoral variants that propose different models and times for adjustment and to continue benefiting big businessmen and owners of everything, the only list in the elections that intends to confront it is the Left Unity Front, with candidates like Myriam Bregman and Nicolás del Caño, and hundreds of workers, women, referents of democratic struggles and youth throughout the country.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
