The contrast helped. on one sidea braggart, arrogant official, accustomed to getting off the helicopter and showing off in actionbut not for resolver nothing, but to do their show in front of the TV cameras. Or, in cases where you are looking resolverit is to do it with the shots in favor of the powerful, as the families of Guernica, the workers of Lear, the residents of the Papa Francisco neighborhood and many more know. In the other sideworkers wrapped in pain for the loss of a colleague murdered hours before, full of anger for the lack of eternal response from governments and businessmen. The pineapple to Sergio Berni did not fall from the sky.
It’s true. She had done it dozens or hundreds of times before. But she didn’t realize that this time she might fail. The routine, and the loss of sensitivity, is something that can – and usually – sink bureaucracies. Leaving theses aside conspiracy to explain the fact, the profound thing is that now something had changed. The pineapple to Berni is towards politics what a tip of the iceberg to the great mass of ice that is under water. With Monday’s newspaper, and always off, a legislator from the Frente de Todos summed it up in one sentence: “The pineapple to Berni was a pineapple to politics. Tomorrow it can be any of us. People are wrong and feel that politics is in their world with the inmates”.
What is it that had changed? It’s not very hard to think about. The drivers’ claimfor protection booths and working conditions (which a certain right wants to use in a demagogic and punitive way to favor a campaign of greater police saturation for repression and social control), It occurs in a certain economic and social context that is very fed up..
In this case, the anger broke out over a crime against a worker. But that murder had also been preceded, just a few days before, by dramatic news that had shaken the country. A three-month-old baby, who lived on the streets with her parents, had died helpless at the very doors of the Casa Rosada and a few meters from the Ministry of Economy. A painful postcard of the growing separation between the political caste and the reality of millions. Perhaps Alberto Fernández and Sergio Massa had not even gotten to see it before from an office window: that week they had been busy in meetings with President Joe Biden and the IMF in the United States, designing the next stage of the adjustment.
The death of the baby caused the indignation that, more coldly, the INDEC numbers had provoked a few hours before. She was part of the 1.3 million children living in destitution in the country. She had also met on Thursday that there are more than 18 million people living in poverty, that is, almost 4 out of every 10 inhabitants of the country. Among children and adolescents the situation is even worse: 54.2% are poor.
The anger that crashed into Berni’s face is that of the accumulation of disappointments and frustrations with the successive governments, combined with the lack of hope conveyed by the current situation and this year’s electoral process. The disaster of the macrismo first, and of the Frente de Todos later, fed back with a present of endless inflationary situation, loss of income and a forecast of a cloudy horizon by the IMF for many years, make a picture of the whole. Politicians who promise and then fail to deliver add fuel to the fire. Those who brag on top of that, receive the change in their faces.
In another column, two weeks ago, however, we analyzed the apparent paradox that the projects that fail are still valid, because the one that continues also has bad results. This is what explains why Together for Change today has a chance of returning to power, but also the incessant degradation of the political regime as a whole and its relationship with the population. Likewise, it is what is in the background of the emergency of the candidacy of Javier Milei, sold as anti-system, despite the fact that he claims ideas as old and failed as the neoliberalism of Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Regan and his Creole version, Menemism.
The most explosive phenomenon today is probably the sharpened crisis of Peronism in power. The failure of Sergio Massa, his last bet, stirred the waters again, perhaps as in the worst moments of Martín Guzmán or Silvina Batakis. “We have to prevent the sinking of the Titanic”Oscar Parrilli, a man close to Cristina Kirchner, declared a few days ago. “Politics is dancing on the deck”Emilio Pérsico shoots in turn, from another camp of the Frente de Todos.
The Massista policy -supported by Kirchnerism- of trying to survive until December 10 without the ship sinking, is full of contradictions. Clinging to applying the IMF plans as the only alternative, the minister executes policies that accelerate inflation and slow down the economy, in a context of extremely high poverty. Last week, without going any further, Massa returned from Washington with the Fund’s new demands: more adjustment in public spending, increase in tariffs and acceleration in the rate of devaluation. The country, under the viceroyalty of the IMF, is supervised and blackmailed quarterly. They are the costs of validating Macri’s inheritance instead of breaking with it. The left had warned about it from the beginning.
Within this framework, the ruling party tries the impossible game of adding fuel to the fire of social bad humor and at the same time reissue in a decadent way the politics of the malmenor. There is anything but naivety: Peronism itself encourages the ghost of the right (and many sympathize with the growth of Javier Milei) to speculate on the polarization and division of the opposition votes.
However, for sectors genuinely concerned about the advance of right-wing variants, it is time for debates and conclusions. If Together for Change is in the race and Javier Milei has emerged as a political actor on the national scene, it is because the policy of “confronting the right” by electing candidates like Alberto Fernández or now supporting the orthodox and neoliberal application of the plans of the IMF by Massa, has done nothing more than open the way for those who said they wanted to fight. Not to mention the tremendous social degradation to which these plans of Peronism lead, without the union or social leaders of Peronism doing anything to stand up. When was the last national strike in Argentina? Who allows the right to advance?
In any case, this advance of the right is taking place at the moment, essentially, in the electoral field. The anger that we see emerging these days is a great reminder and a great preview of what could happen if they seek to speed up adjustment plans and structural reforms. The demagogy of the right, as we pointed out recently, can crash again as the cambiemita project crashed when reality reminded them that it was not true that there was a social consensus for their policies. The pineapple, too, should be read as a reminder, and that goes for everyone: Although it cannot be ruled out that a new devaluation jump will be imposed before the change of government, what is certain is that it is Peronism, Milei or Together for Change, all intend to accelerate the adjustment plans during the next Government. What is not certain is that they can pass them successfully. Maybe they’ll eat a pineapple.
Going back to Kirchnerism, a shrewd journalist realized in any case that the discursive juggling devised by the top, logically, is not accepted by the bottom: “Something does not close between criticizing the President, supporting the Minister of Economy and the reality of the territories”. People don’t eat glass.
Even so, there are people who continue to act as a commentator as if they did not govern. Last week, The Campora issued a statement entitled “The IMF is poverty” in which, in addition to denouncing the consequences of applying the Fund’s policies, they affirm that “we believe that governing is to confront the interests of economic power in favor of the most vulnerable sectors.” Beautiful, if it weren’t for the fact that Cristina Kirchner -who supports Massa- is the vice president, and Pedro’s “Wado” is the Interior Minister of the Government that applies the IMF plans.
The reality is very different. The pineapple to Berni also has as a background that, while all social indicators deteriorate to dramatic levels, the economy comes from growing more than 5% last year. The “model” of the Frente de Todos is profit for few and poverty for many, and that is also behind the anger: the financial groups, the landowners, the agropower exporting octopuses or the large business groups that speculate on the people’s hunger by increasing prices or looting the country’s natural resources won. The crisis is not for everyone.
What lesser evil are we talking about? A government that is full of bureaucrats who justify the unjustifiable “because it does not give the relationship of forces”, which legitimizes Macri’s inheritance, governs for the rich and has union and social leaders who let everything go, not only loses political authority, but also also moral. The 39.2% of poverty invalidates in this framework calling himself a progressive who bank this government.
There are moments in history that are hinge. Liberals, Peronists and radicals have already governed in Argentina and we are in this situation, 40 years after the end of the dictatorship. There are no more excuses or turns to give it. The exit is to the left, and it is today. There is no time to lose. Give strength and join this alternative, to face what is coming.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
