From El Calafate
The city of El Calafate is covered in snow and although it is a little after five in the afternoon, the thermometer insists on showing seven degrees below zero. However, that did not prevent a crowd from crowding into the Municipal Cinema Theater where Cristina Fernández de Kirchner arrived to inaugurate it. Inside, in the room there were 350 people who occupied their seats. There the climate was more pleasant, much more temperate, perhaps like the relationship with President Alberto Fernández, with whom he resumed dialogue. During her long-awaited speech, the vice president said that “It is important that in Argentina we stop discussing people and start discussing policies”. Some irony was also allowed, such as when he said that “I am not here to revoke any minister”, and like deputy Máximo Kirchner, he also targeted the former head of the Economy portfolio, Martín Guzmán, when he said that his resignation on Twitter: “It was an immense act of political irresponsibility and also an act of institutional destabilization. It even seems to me a gesture of immense personal ingratitude towards the President himself,” he said.
But the reference to Guzmán did not remain a sharp criticism of his person but, as proof of the improvement in the relationship with Alberto Fernández, the vice president indicated that it was a gesture “of immense personal ingratitude towards the President himself,” he said. and added that “I do not hide the differences. This president had banked that Minister of Economy like no one else, even facing his own coalition forces. Did he deserve that?” He asked himself before stating that Guzmán did not it was something other than an act of “political irresponsibility” and “institutional destabilization”.
Then the vice president returned to a topic that worries her: the bi-monetary economy. In this regard, she said that this “unites all the crises in Argentina: the shortage of dollars, the exchange rate run, the devaluations and the inflations,” she said. She then added that when the sectors of power cannot access the dollar, then the gap is generated to cause devaluation. She also indicated that if a government does not allow dollars to be withdrawn, then “they behave like addicts; if they can’t do it by hook, they do it by crook, and the country’s economy explodes.” Of course, she warned that this is usually justified by the protectionist policies applied by a government like the one she led, but she warned that when Macri ruled, freeing everything, “it didn’t go well either.” “East it is a structural problem that constitutes the bimonetary economy“, he pointed out.
In passing, CFK highlighted that Santa Cruz “is the province that produces the most dollars for its productive apparatus” together with Santa Fe, Córdoba, the province of Buenos Aires and Chubut. Then, with irony, he stated that “if I look at the number of dollars per capita, this province (Santa Cruz) is the first in terms of dollar production. Find out which is the one that spends the most dollars and does not produce dollars. It is CABA, with more than 7 billion dollars,” he remarked.
Neither the cold exterior nor the mildness of the cinema and even the peace that reigns in the leadership of the FdT prevented CFK from referring to the social programs. In this context, he took advantage of the presence of the governor of Santa Cruz, Alicia Kirchner, who knew how to be Minister of Social Development of Néstor Kirchner. “Within a month of assuming her position, accompanying her brother in 2003, Alicia received two million Heads of Household plans and, from there, a policy began to be developed.” “Policies are not developed only in the Ministry of Social Development but also in the Ministry of Economy”, she clarified and said: “In 2015, when we finished the government, of those two million plans that she received, only ten percent remained”, she said and the audience applauded her. Before, he clarified between laughs that he was not promoting his sister-in-law to return to Social Development.
The vice president was accompanied, in addition to the governor of the province, by the Minister of Education of the Nation, Jaime Perczyk, and by the mayor of the city, Javier Belloni. They were summoned by the inauguration of the first cinema in the city, an event that generated emotion among the inhabitants, who went with flags and drums to receive CFK at the doors of the new building. Not even the intense cold, much less the heavy snowfall, stopped them.
Before entering the room, the former president toured a sample of local artists that were in the building and even had time to take a photo leaving her house with the snowy background. She had arrived in town the night before and she will stay until Sunday. After her speech, she greeted the militancy and went to dinner with Alicia Kirchner.
In another section of his speech, CFK indicated that “better policies can be made, not because we dream of a utopia but because we have made them. For years in this country we have been discussing people and not politicsIn this line, the vice president highlighted the numbers of the economy that her government left in 2015 and that were reflected in a report published by the UIA. In this context, she congratulated the Minister of the Interior, Edward “Wado” of Peter, for his speech on Thursday in front of businessmen at the CICYP. “They are data, numbers. That is something that we Argentines, the political leadership and also the trade union: not to talk about the face that I like the most or that suits me best, but to talk about specific numbers”.
CFK not only took up what he said in his speeches at the CTA and in Ensenada, but also what he said at the event for the 100 years of YPF, which took place in Tecnópolis on June 3. He mentioned his president, Pablo Gonzalez, who was in the first rows of the room and said: “Today the tender for the Néstor Kirchner gas pipeline has just been opened. Clarion says that Techint has just bought a pipe factory in Louisiana, USA, for 460 million dollars, almost half of the 200 million dollars that we gave them,” he said, recalling his questioning of the delay in the construction of the gas pipeline .”I want to help, but that’s not keeping your mouth shut and sweeping the dirt under the rug. It helps to tell the truth and if I’m wrong, convince me otherwise. With arguments and reasons they take me anywhere, but not punches and slaps.”
Earlier, CFK had mentioned the Previaje program mentioned by the local mayor. He took advantage of this topic to relate it to the speculation carried out by some businessmen by increasing prices and, therefore, fueling inflation. In this sense, he indicated that the government should establish price policies with the chambers of the tourism sector to “take advantage” of public sector investment. “What I do believe is that the government should convene the hotel chamber and the gastronomic chamber to coordinate price policies, because this sector is one of those that has contributed the most, along with textiles and others, to the formation of the inflation index,” he said and added sharply: “Those who do not want to agree on prices should not be adhered to the Pre-Trip program.”
To close, the vice president stressed: “without rancor, but with many ideas and great hope we must convene ourselves. Not for violence, like others, but for the construction of an Argentina in peace.” As confirmed from her environment, the vice president will continue with these talks in different provinces of the country, possibly every week. For this Saturday, meanwhile, the words of President Alberto Fernández are expected in Tucumán. There will also be the representative of the third leg of the Frente de Todos, the head of the Chamber of Deputies, Sergio Massa.