NATIONAL POLITICAL OVERVIEW
The repayment of the debt in dollars raised a wave of suspicions that the Economy Minister was unable to dispel. Massa’s presidential candidacy is up for grabs.
In equal conditions, the simplest explanation is usually the most likely”. This is how the logical principle that the friar William of Occam came up with to shave the beards of the metaphysical speculations of the Middle Ages read. Those inexplicable labyrinths that prevented the development of the scientific method.
If Sergio Massa wanted to return to the financial markets the abandoned idea of a reliable Argentina, there were two simpler things to do, rather than the martingale he attempted with the repurchase of foreign debt bonds. Two immediate verification initiatives in the week that begins: get the support of their deputies to the impeachment attempts against the Supreme Court and reject the embrace of the Argentine Government to the dictators of the region in the Celac meeting.
Massa preferred to delve into a complex metaphysics. He reached into the most agonizing box in the country -the Central Bank reserves- and spent ten percent of what was there to repurchase one percent of the debt in external bonds. He said that he was doing it to restore confidence in the national economy. Within hours he raised the dollar again.
The market was filled with rumors about the beneficiaries of the bond repurchase. The operation had all the appearance of a leak of privileged information to generate a million-dollar business. Massa was in the crosshairs. The minister had already been questioned about the cancellation of debts to energy companies, from capitals close to his political ties. In defending himself, he counterattacked: He says you really don’t have to figure out who benefited from the bond jubilee, but who was driving the dollar up.
If the logical principle is applied, the most probable explanation is the simplest: Massa raffled off a good part of the few dollars that are in the Central.
Just as the Frente de Todos lacks candidates for president, Together for Change has plenty. It is not a virtue but rather a problem for the opposition.
Massa’s maneuver is part of a time of high political fragility for the Government and the country. The Frente de Todos does not have a presidential candidate and hopes that the Minister of Economy agrees to lead the electoral offer. In Kirchnerism, the idea of withdrawing from the province of Buenos Aires prevails. He hopes that the mutual traction of Axel Kicillof’s budget and Cristina Kirchner’s votes provide them with the re-election of the governor and the renewal of privileges for the former president. That look of retraction towards the district is a mirror of what all Peronism is doing in the territories it governs. Massa’s candidacy would only function as a mask for fragmentation. Why would the minister risk that fate?
The simplest answer is the most likely: because the opposition has the best chances to win and the leaders with the best image, but it is also stressed towards fragmentation. Your problem is not excess demand, but supply.
But In politics, the markets also anticipate. Juntos por el Cambio is a coalition that does not yet know with which integration it will reach the Paso. This leads to another conclusion. The Argentine political system can be analyzed from two observation matrices: that of the institutional functioning of its three powers and that of the established order of its coalition scheme.
The functioning of the powers is in a serious situation. The Executive was never able to get out of the internal blockade between the President and the vice. The Legislature has remained paralyzed since the day the ruling party divided over the only economic program it found on the way: the agreement with the IMF. The Judiciary remains functioning, which Kirchnerism needs inactive.
If one looks from the scheme of coalitionsthe moment prior to the primaries is the one with the greatest centrifugal force for the system. But nothing ensures that it will later be rearranged into consistent poles. The risk is fragmentation. As in the rest of the region, Argentina is beginning to join a scene where, in addition to the economic crisis and social unrest, conflicts for governability are looming.