Argentine president navigates between criticism, low image, and the economic crisis

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – With a sharp drop in his image in the polls and the object of criticism from within and outside the ruling party, the Argentine President, Alberto Fernández, faces the last year and a half of his term of office navigating between the economic uncertainty left by the high inflation and the controversy for the party he celebrated at the worst moment of the pandemic.

The Argentine president participated today in the traditional Tedeum for May 25, the day the formation of the country’s first national government is commemorated and called for “unity”.

“Unity depends on us, it is an individual decision, and I do not want you to think like me, but the first thing is the people,” said the president in statements to the press.

The political analyst of the consulting firm Clivajes, Esteban Regueira, told EFE that the main cause of the fall of the presidential image is due to the structural economic problems that Argentina has been going through since 2019 and could not be solved currently.

“The government prioritized agreeing with creditors, which, although it was something fundamental and necessary, ended up sacrificing the containment of the local economy, and if you add the internal conflicts that the ruling coalition of the Frente de Todos maintains, it ends up being a lethal combination,” the specialist explained.

A report published at the beginning of this month by the D’Alessio IROL firm indicated that the Fernández government has 73% of negative opinion, the highest since he assumed the Presidency.

The concern of Argentines, regardless of their ideology, is inflation and the increase in prices of essential products.

According to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), last month’s inflation rate experienced a year-on-year increase of 58%, the highest increase since January 1992, when the country was beginning to emerge from hyperinflation.

This increase only increased the criticism of the Fernandez government, whose economic policies have not yet succeeded in calming a problem that is already chronic in the South American country.

CONFLICT OF INTERESTS

On the other hand, the internal conflict of the head of state with the vice-president and former president, Cristina Fernández (2007-2015), hinders the management in general and the resolution of the economic crisis in particular.

Last Monday, the Secretary of Domestic Trade, Roberto Feletti, who played a crucial role in price control and was an official close to the vice-president, resigned.

Feletti made this decision after Fernández decided last Friday that the Secretariat of Domestic Trade would be transferred from the Ministry of Productive Development to the Ministry of Economy, under the orders of Martín Guzmán, a minister whose economic policy is publicly objected to by Cristina Fernández and the political sector that the former president leads within the ruling Frente de Todos (Front for All).

Cristina Fernández wants “to separate herself from the current management because it does not agree with the objectives of the social economy that Kirchnerism used to become strong while in power,” according to Regueira.

“THE COUP DE GRACE”

The decision of a judge this week to homologate the agreement between the Argentine president and the Prosecutor’s Office to close the case for the birthday celebration of his partner, Fabiola Yáñez, which took place at the presidential residence in July 2020, amid confinement due to the covid-19 pandemic, has been criticized by the opposition.

Prosecutor Rodolfo Domínguez of the Federal Prosecutor’s Office 2 of San Isidro had considered “reasonable” the donation of ARS 1.6 million (US$13,400) to close the case that impacted the president’s public image.

On the eve of the legislative elections, the case broke out last year when several photos of Yáñez’s 39th birthday party at the presidential Quinta de Olivos were leaked to the press.

It led to the opening of a judicial investigation for the alleged violation of the sanitary restrictions in force at the time, for which the president, his partner, and the nine friends with whom he celebrated the birthday were charged.

According to Regueira, the Olivos party was a kind of “coup de grace” for the president.

“In Argentina, the informal economy is enormous, and if they do not go out to work, they do not bring money home. That was a critical political trigger for the Frente de Todos, which was the beginning of the breakup of the coalition,” he concluded.

Although calls had circulated on the social networks for a march on May 25 in the capital against the government of Fernandez, so far, it has not taken place.

With information from EFE