2023-09-10 04:24:53
The results of the PASO have shown that Argentine society, excluding just over 30% who did not vote, is electorally divided into thirds. The challenge of Unión por la Patria consists of disseminating its proposals and, at the same time, explaining that what the opposition mentioned in Javier Milei and Patricia Bullrich proposes has already been done in our country and ended very badly. Your offer for the future is a past that failed.
With this vision, during the week President Alberto Fernández criticized the sectors that postpone “the development of the country to continue concentrating income and wealth in a few”, he reiterated that the problems of Argentines “are not resolved by removing the State” and added that “70% of public spending is aimed at the pension system and the assistance of those who need it most. What are they going to adjust? What are they going to get from the retirees? What do they want to do?”
Both oppositions return to the concept expressed in one of the leading phrases of the civil-military dictatorship: “Shrinking the State is enlarging the Nation.” That ideology was revived with force in the 90s when they won the cultural battle and dismantled a good part of the state apparatus. Beyond differences in styles, Milei and Bullrich return to the same slogan: reduce the State and deregulate. It is the same plan that Mauricio Macri tried to carry out starting in 2016. They are the new Pied Pipers who want to take the country to the precipice.
The libertarian candidate insists with his challenge to what he calls the “political caste.” But, what do we talk about when we talk about caste? What are the proper names of the caste? Are they the ones who keep the largest part of the cake, concentrating income and wealth? who in the City of Buenos Aires monopolize real estate businesses? Those who in the 90s stayed with public companies and have benefited from fabulous businesses? Are they the beneficiaries of public service concessions? A task for this electoral stage is to clarify who makes up the caste in Argentina.
The sectors of the concentrated economy in our country detest the State and want to take it to a minimum, but many of them have built their fortunes using that same State. There are countless examples in recent history. One of the clearest was the nationalization of private debt during the last civil-military dictatorship, when US$23 billion of private debt was transferred to that State that they hate. In that period the external public debt, which was US$5 billion, rose to US$32 million. That is, it increased six-fold; 23 billion of that total came from the nationalization of private external debt. In this operation, around seventy large companies benefited, many of which continue to operate. They used, for their own benefit, the State that they denigrate.
In this sense, the Minister of Economy and candidate of Unión por la Patria, Sergio Massa, declared: “We are committed to defending public investment in Argentina, because it is the country model in which we believe, because we believe that the “The State has to reduce gaps, it has to reduce asymmetries and it has to return, in services and infrastructure, taxes to citizens.” He added that the discussion is: “productive model, versus financial model: either Argentina governs the interior, the productive one, the one of work, the one of the industrial belt of Greater Buenos Aires, the one that believes in development, in upward social mobility, or they rule the sixty blocks of the City and the slaves of Wall Street.”
The fewer state regulations there are, the more they regulate corporate powers. The latter do not need the protection of laws. Those who need them are the weakest, because they have less strength in their relationship with the powerful. So all laws should be made to protect the weak because the strong don’t need them. There are two models. Among many other pillars, one promotes an efficient State at the service of the majority of Argentines; the other, under the discourse of anti-politics and anti-regulation, proposes a State at the service of minorities.
*National deputy for the Frente de Todos and president of the Solidarity Party.
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