When the game was losing, and by a lot, the changes were made. There was less than half of the regulation time to finish and the bet was to play everything to reverse the result, which seemed to be heading for a defeat. The landscape was complex. If, on the other hand, the metaphor was boxing, the situation was such that the match could even end earlier and by knockout. Without going any further, recently an important Peronist mayor said that last winter they were one day to go “by helicopter”. Perhaps he exaggerates to justify the current situation, but the situation was serious.
Sergio Tomás Massa thus entered the cabinet with a clear mandate: to show economic results, not only to avoid the abyss that was seen so closely in those dizzying days of the currency run under Silvina Batakis, but also to reach 2023 with possibilities for the Front of all. It was, perhaps, the last bullet of this Peronist experience in power: if the matter began to improve, responsibilities could even be established for the previous poor results not only in Macri, the pandemic and the war, but also in Martín Guzmán and Alberto Fernández, who since those days has played an almost protocol role.
Ambitions for that goal were modest. There was no longer talk of filling the fridge, or returning to the barbecue, or recovering what was lost with Macri, or making the debt and the IMF stop being a problem. Not even prioritizing retirees over banks. The economic bet was barely stabilize and politics give the idea that a new management was doing things well, opening a new stage. If that was achieved, there would be a candidate.
The hyperactivity of the superministroHis reputation for taking rabbits out of the hat time and time again, his well-oiled links with factors of power and some occasional first result in lowering inflation, deluded many that things could work. The scaloneta It also helped to improve the climate at the end of the year.
Yet again, things happened. Or rather, what had to happen happened. The consequences of applying the IMF plan are strongly perceived today, not only in the persistence of extremely high inflation, but also in a slowdown in economic growth, which is partly the result of the adjustment policies themselves. The significant drought that is hitting the country only aggravates this situation and even means that new peaks in the economic crisis cannot be ruled out during the electoral campaign, crossed by multiple devaluation pressures. At this time, Alberto Fernández is asking Joe Biden for help in Washington to address this problem. doesn’t sound very national and popular.
Within this framework, Peronism is experiencing, a few months before the elections, the crisis of its latest bet. With the electoral calendar counting down, the plan to show some economic improvement is failing and they have less and less room to reverse it. To the bad inflation data known during the summer, this Thursday will be added the percentage of poverty that INDEC will report and will report a serious social situation. Added to Cristina Kirchner’s resignation from being a candidate and Alberto Fernández’s unconvincing candidacy for re-election, are thus added growing doubts about the possibility that -with these results- Massa will be a competitive candidate. The polarization with the right acts at this point almost as the only argument. If he wasn’t there either, variants like Daniel Scioli, Pedro’s “Wado” or Jorge Capitanich appear, in the context of a weakened space.
Macri’s withdrawal and the approaches of discontent
A few months before the end of his term, and beyond the electoral forecasts that are difficult to make in an uncertain ArgentinaIt is already a fact that Peronism has added another chapter to the saga of popular disappointments with successive governments. While from the different branches of the ruling party they try to find a way around the complex issue of presenting a competitive electoral option in this framework -also in the absence of Cristina Kirchner who got off denouncing the ban, but also for not being able to detach herself from the failure of the current government-, From other spaces, various strategies are in play to address the political capitalization of discontent.
In this context, from different political camps, discursive options are sought that seek to exploit anger and boredom electorally, but at the same time problems of a strategic nature loom with concern, such as those that show dark clouds on the horizon of the so-called governance.
It is not new, at this point, the existence on the national stage -and in accordance with what is happening in other latitudes of the world- of the far-right demagogy of characters like Javier Milei or Patricia Bullrich who, even with their nuances, place themselves before the crisis from one end of the political arc and seek to use the accumulation of discontent in defense of projects of the powerful.
The news of the pre-electoral scenario has been given in recent days by the resignation of Mauricio Macri to be a candidate, enabling, presumably -the possibility of an agreement cannot be ruled out 100%-, a STEP in Together for Change between his former Minister of Security and Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, remaining to define multiple aspects of negotiation in the provinces and the relationship with the other partners of the Alliance.
However, this is not just a (not so surprising) announcement regarding candidacies, but problems of a deeper nature are also revealed in discourse analysis. In his resignation video, the former PRO president implicitly threw himself against Milei by questioning the bets on “messianic leaders.” He also took up a historical axis of his party regarding working as a “team”, giving the whole tone of speech something more dialogued than he had been having, although always under the rhetoric of confronting the populism and address the need for “change” (ie, make structural reforms and further adjustments). In subsequent media interviews, he also asked Milei to “not be so harsh in the terms he uses. We believe in dialogue.” The former president of the PRO, while trying to keep his weight to play as a voter within the right-wing opposition, seems to be testing a new discursive diagonal between the different wings of the PRO.
For his part, Horacio Rodriguez Larreta, in the current stage of his erratic campaign, has been trying a different strategy to capitalize on discontent with politics, different from that of Javier Milei or Patricia Bullrich. Returning also to a brand of origin duranbarbistathe current head of the CABA has been emphasizing the need to end “the crack” and focus on the management to solve the problems from the people. It is a different path for the same electoral objective: detachment from the weariness of broad sectors with the policy.
In the background, however, there is a deeper problem than the electoral one. Between an election that deepens political and social polarization (if candidates more prone to “shock” measures such as Bullrich or, less likely, Milei prevail) and another that configures a dispute between a candidate like Larreta and some “moderate” variant of the Peronism, different bets are also played on “governance”. In a context of economic crisis that promises to continue in time under the clutches of the IMF plans, and a considerable loss of prestige of the parties of the regime but also of other State and regime actors such as the Judiciary, the Armed Forces or the union bureaucracy, Concerns are growing among different sectors of the ruling classes to evaluate what dose of frontal attacks and what dose of negotiation they will be necessary in the next period to apply the capitalist plans without losing control of the situation. In Macri’s resignation (which mirrors that of Cristina Kirchner and makes it difficult for the latter to reverse her decision if she wanted to) and her discursive turns, concern about this problem also seems to be insinuated., beyond the debates regarding whether his electoral withdrawal also responds to a calculation on whether he would have the necessary votes, having the levels of rejection that he has. As we have said on other occasions, and it is observed in different parts of the world, what is used to win elections is not necessarily used to govern. If not, ask Macron.
The left, on the other hand, looks at the stage from another side. At the same time that it participates actively and with all its forces in the ongoing struggles, which are precisely those that advance that it is not said that the next plans of attack will pass without resistance (as shown by the workers of Coca-Cola, Kraft, teachers of different parts of the country or those who mobilized against the power outages, among others), does not speculate or calculate in a petty way, but rather loudly raises the need to draw conclusions from the failures that led us here and the challenge of resolutely confront the right-wing opposition that intends to govern after December 10, but also Peronism, which, beyond the progressive or redistributionist traits that it sometimes maintains in its speech, comes from having elected a friend of corporations as president Alberto Fernández to settle with the IMF and is currently supporting Sergio Massa, who under the directives of the Monetary Fund applies a neoliberal adjustment even harsher than the one that Martín Guzmán had been applying, subjecting the country to backwardness, impoverishment and dependency . Discontent must be given an exit on the left.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
