“We are all people (oh, yes, yes, yes), nothing separates us. We all join in the same walk (forward). We go forward with the same dream. We are all people, with the same desire to succeed”. The song by the Santa Fe artist Soledad Pastorutti was playing over the loudspeakers when the president Alberto Fernandez He finished his tour of the Mercado de Lomas and faced the stage. He had been preceded by the governor Axel Kicillofof the Minister of the Interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro and the head of the Buenos Aires Cabinet, Martin Insaurralde. However, and despite the unity song as well as the Presidency’s own announcements announcing his presence, the Minister of Economy was not there, Serge Massa.
Although significant, it was not the only absence. In the place of the act, one of the parking lots of the inaugurated market, there was the stage, but there was no crowd, no political banners, or social organizations.
Close to Massa they justified their absence maintaining that he was “with the fiscal organization meetings together with the secretary (Raúl) Rigo, (the chief of advisers, Leonardo) Madcur and with “those responsible for the administration of ministries for spending ceilings and programming the management until the end of the year”. However, from the official’s environment, they did not specify why his presence at the event had been announced if he had already scheduled these activities beforehand.
They added that he was also dealing with “the voluntary debt swap issue.” To which the president also alluded at the time of beginning his speech and explaining Massa’s absence. In his place was the Secretary of Domestic Trade, Matías Tombolini, the second to speak. The President returned to the charge to boost a wage and price agreement” class=”com-link” data-reactroot=””> a wage and price agreement. “With Sergio [por Massa] We are going to convene businessmen and trade unionists to align prices and wages for the next 60 days,” he promised.
Fernández and Massa, for their part, participated on Friday in the inauguration of a section of the railway in Santa Fe, in which the man from Tigre was rebuked by a group of neighbors.
In today’s act, the first to speak was the mayor in use of license from Lomas de Zamora and current boss of Kicillof’s management, Martín Insaurralde. He spoke for several minutes, among other things, about the market and its competitive prices, in an area surrounded by pockets of structural poverty.
The mayors Mayra Mendoza, from Quilmes, listened closely; Andrés Watson, from Florencio Varela, Noelia Correra from Malvinas Argentinas; Karina Menéndez de Merlo and the mayors of Florencio Varela, Andrés Watson; de Morón, Lucas Ghi; from Ensenada, Mario Secco; Admiral Brown, Juan José Fabiani (interim); from San Martin, Fernando Moreira (interim); from Escobar, Carlos Ramil (interim); and from Avellaneda, Alejo Chornobroff (interim). All of them, after Insaurralde’s words, signed two separate agreements to create their own markets.
Under the stage, in the first row were the Minister of the Interior Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro, the official and leader of the Fernando “Chino” Navarro Movement and Daniel Menéndez, of Social Development and Barrios de Pie, among other figures from the ruling party, such as the Buenos Aires deputy, Victoria Tolosa Paz. Also the head of the PAMI, Luana Volnovich.
But if the presences spoke in this act at noon on a cold day, the absences did so even more. The lack of presence of militants and flags of social or political groups or movements did not go unnoticed. Without a crowd, the president began to speak after 1:00 p.m., two hours after the scheduled time. From the Presidency they assured that it was an act with neighbors who “were specifically asked to go without identifying flags or banners.” They explained that it was so because it was an act of government and “that’s how Insaurralde likes it”, in reference to the Buenos Aires chief of staff. After which they added that “we congratulated and thanked Insaurralde very much, and we all came back with the idea of what a good act.”
Fernández spoke for 17 minutes. He named Massa several times and Cristina once. He insisted on unity. When he finished there were light blue and white pieces of paper. Three posters appeared in the public, on colored cardboard, saying: “Hold on Cristina.”