Stuck with an apple in the box – Juventud Rebeldi

In the Argentinian version, Snow White still has a piece of a poisoned apple in the middle of her throat. The worst thing is that it would be hard to get stuck, or patted on the back, not even the Prince’s enchanted kiss to unlock him and the killer piece of fruit to appear.

As one can guess, the stepmother’s devious move continues to have detrimental effects for the Everyone’s Front Government (FdT) and worse on the country, after the former ruling and right-wing Alliance for Change (JpC) forced the nation to that deadly bite: the fallout of the loan that Mauricio Macri’s contract with the International Monetary Fund increasingly dominates Argentina’s economic life to the point of jeopardizing social peace, while increasing the likelihood of a political crisis. And it continues to plunge it into the financial crisis.

There is no way to pay the largest debt ever granted by the institution ($44 billion received under Macri out of $54 billion granted by the International Monetary Fund). Give up doing it and suppose hypothetical The executive branch considers it a more costly variant due to the penalty that the international financial framework may impose on a country; And the agreement reached means, despite all the efforts of Buenos Aires to avoid this, the usual goals that somehow burden the lives of citizens, which have been criticized by important voices and sectors even within the front and the government, and which indicate to favor another outlet.

The jigsaw looks the same: Credit has turned into a trap that the right has left impeding the management of the FdT and the implementation of its program, that alliance swears.

One might argue that if the JpC were to repeat in the presidency, as he had aspired to in the 2019 elections, it would be that force that was at fault. But that would not have been a problem for their politicians. They were going to implement a tight neoliberal adjustment program to the marrow that people would pay at any price, and that’s it.

Conversely, after careful consideration of continuing to support families who cannot pay because of their low income, the FdT executive now faces the difficult task of having to withdraw part of the assistance he provided soon to reduce costs. electricity. and gas service. The assistance will be maintained for the families that charge the least; But those who earn more will have to pay.

The agreement with the International Monetary Fund, announced in January this year after numerous negotiations and expired in March, is binding. There are targets, considered severe, for fiscal deficit and inflation, and it is precisely they that go through the removal of subsidies for public services. In return, the fund pays Argentina the same amount it owes so that you can pay it later. Payment is simply delayed. Not an iota of forgiveness. very abusive.

The Argentina case is another example, perhaps the most blatant in the hemisphere, of the plunder that international financial policies have led to the present chaos and its political consequences, because of the dependence they impose. How much could an FdT cost politically, in the face of citizens, an execution marked by the task imposed by others?

Alas and alas, Argentina is in the same place and at a crossroads – or worse, given current global conditions and the evolution of the financial market – as was the case when Nestor Kirchner succeeded in rescheduling the country’s external debt in 2003, after passing the terrible stage. The economic and financial crisis that toppled presidents and brought people to the streets in 2001.

Argentina at that time restored the stalled factories, and brought the fields back into production; The economy has grown and money has been pushed out of the clutches of the International Monetary Fund. A little over ten years later, the right-wing Mauricio Macri, with the stroke of a pen, put her in debt again. Some believe that the money was squandered, as he and his group did, enabling them to travel abroad, into private accounts. Reports indicate that capital flight during the Macri period (2015-2019) tripled and exceeded 86 billion dollars, and was concentrated in only one hundred natural and legal persons.

Others estimate that by agreeing to a massive loan that went against its own rules, the IMF already had a bad sense of poisoning the left-wing government it was clearly going to replace.

“We had a noose around our necks,” President Alberto Fernandez noted last January, when he announced the culmination of recent negotiations with the fund. (…) It is the best deal the government can get.”

Unsatisfied with the pressures involved in materializing the agreement he negotiated, the Economy Minister, Martin Guzmán, submitted his resignation a few weeks ago and was replaced by Silvia Patakis, without changing the figure demonstrating the alleged shifts in Argentine fiscal policy.

But after meetings in Washington on Monday with Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and after convincing the institution and the financial world to achieve the goals, Patakis also resigned three days ago.

She will be replaced by the current president of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa, who will be sworn in on Tuesday, and will be responsible for the so-called top administration that contains the economics, productive development and agriculture portfolio, in what is presented as a ministerial reorganization going through other resignations.

Analysts expect that the movement will bring important measures that will have an impact on the rise in exports and relief for citizens.

The evils caused by the actions against Moscow that followed its military operation in Ukraine add to the economic downturn left by the worst of the pandemic and make the Argentine panorama even more difficult, since inflation has been reported, it has found in recent days an exchange. Falling prices that caused the peso to fall against the dollar, there have been rallies by social movements to demand a universal basic salary, and its organizers refuse to agree with the International Monetary Fund.

In a turbulent river…

Political turmoil will not only be loaded, surely, into next year’s presidential election if this government is held accountable for what happens, even if it pays for the dishes the former CEO broke. This is what some surveys have already predicted.

In addition, some local media reported on an alleged early election after some political voices did so, and it was preceded by a scandalous video clip of retired colonel Aldo Rico calling for the coup, with the false pretext that the republic is “anarchy” and that “there is no government.”

FdT deputies issued a rallying statement on the executive branch and denounced the existence of a “systematic act of political and economic destabilization with maneuvers and expressions of a pure coup court,” including the brutal fall of the peso. .

It has been argued that progress in elections would be unconstitutional. But his approach hardly indicates that the panorama can still be shaken. The nation is stuck. We’ll see to what extent the new cabinet changes can help.