[Polítics] Alberto Fernández warns Kirchnerism: “I am the president”

[Inkriql]

The crisis at the top of power in Argentina escalates day by day. President Alberto Fernández no longer hides his discomfort with his vice president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. This Tuesday, he warned whoever was his political mentor that he is the one who makes government decisions. But at the same time he called for the unity of the Frente de Todos, the Peronist coalition that has Kirchnerism as its main force. The rupture was consummated last Thursday, when the 13 senators who respond to the vice president voted against the agreement signed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to refinance a debt of 44.5 billion dollars. Fernández has long endured friendly fire, but the negative vote from members of his own coalition was too much.

"When they proposed to me to be in charge, I knew that I was going to have to make decisions and I expected them to accompany me and they did not accompany me," lamented the president in an interview that he gave to an ultra-Kirchnerist radio station. He thus tried to give a direct message to whoever put him in charge of the presidency, as he himself said. In 2019, it was Cristina Kirchner who asked Fernández to run for president, with her as her vice president. The experiment was successful in blocking the re-election of Mauricio Macri, but he has made water to govern. The differences regarding the economic direction grew with the worsening of the crisis. The criticism of Cristina Kirchner and her son Máximo de ella, leader of the group La Cámpora, were less and less veiled. The parliamentary rebellion of Kirchnerism was, finally, a declaration of open war.

 

Fernández has said this Tuesday that he will not be the one to take the step towards a breakup of the coalition. “Not all of us think the same. What I think we cannot do is give ourselves the luxury, for whatever reason, narcissism, selfishness, politics, to disunite. On my part, do not expect a single gesture that breaks the unity. I am not anyone's puppet. It has been shown that I have differences, but I act with my convictions. I listen to everyone, but I am the president and I am the one who has to make the decisions”, he expressed.

It is the first time that the Argentine president has referred so openly to the fight with Cristina Kirchner. The Argentines knew that things were not right by actions, more than by words. After the electoral defeat in the primary elections of September last year, Cristina Kirchner ordered the ministers who respond to her to present her resignation. She thus forced Fernandez to make a Cabinet change that she did not want. The relationship definitely deteriorated with the agreement with the IMF. While the opposition supported it in Congress, the text received merciless criticism from Kirchnerism.

On Monday, a group of Kirchnerist intellectuals put words to the discontent of the sector. In a public letter, they criticized Fernández's economic strategy to combat inflation, which is already over 50%, and warned that calls for unity alone are not enough to resolve the economic and political disaster that Argentina is going through. “Unity for what policy? Unit that guarantees the transfer of resources from workers to capital? Unit that breaks the electoral contract and in which the workers are harmed?”, the authors of the document wondered. “The ‘Unity’ of the Frente de Todos was already broken in November 2021 when more than four million voters who accompanied him in 2019 no longer did so in the mid-term elections. Rebuilding it is the goal,” the document says.

In Kirchnerism they consider that the crisis will end up dragging them to a defeat in the 2023 presidential elections. And that the agreement with the IMF will only aggravate the debacle. The strategy has been to leave the president alone. For now, Cristina Kirchner will continue in the Executive, at least formally. On Thursday, Argentina commemorates a new anniversary of the 1976 military coup against Isabel Perón. La Cámpora, the group of Máximo, Cristina Kirchner's son, has organized a long march from the former ESMA illegal detention center to the Plaza de Mayo. The tour involves crossing the entire city of Buenos Aires from west to east. It will be a show of force for Fernández, a reminder that the street belongs to them.

 

https://elpais.com/internacional/2022-03-23/alberto-fernandez-advierte-al-kirchnerismo-el-presidente-soy-yo.html