Although they prefer not to say it in public, the main officials of the Alberto Fernández government already know that it will be impossible to modify the electoral legislation to skip this year’s PASO. “We are working with the idea that the PASO will be done, because there is no consensus to suspend them”, Admitted this week to Clarion one of the most important officials of the Casa Rosada.
Among the reasons for the Government to consider the original attempt dead are at least three political restrictions: in the coalition of the Frente de Todos there is no consensus on the advantages that eliminating the first round of voting would bring to the ruling party, there are no votes necessary to modify the law because the opposition has already warned that it is against that plan and the Government does not have the power to prevent there from being STEP in the City of Buenos Aires and the Province of Buenos Aires. “The truth is that it is useless for us to pay the cost of changing everything if half the people are still going to have to vote that day,” explains the same official on this last point.
Faced with this situation, the Government chose to seek at least a postponement that allows it to gain as much time as possible to move the election away from the lowest point of the crisis. The postponement argument gained weight in the conversations of the ruling party when it became clear that all the promises to achieve appreciable vaccination rates during the summer had been undone. “Without vaccines, we can’t even start campaigning“Admits one of the officials of the Executive Branch who has the application on his cell phone to monitor the application of vaccines hour by hour.
At this time, the Ministry of Health and the Chief of Cabinet – the two organizations dedicated to negotiating with vaccine suppliers – are dedicated to trying to reconstruct something similar to a new schedule of Sputnik V vaccine shipments. After the conversation between Alberto Fernández and Vladimir Putin this week, Argentine officials and technicians asked them, once the breach of the contract with the Russian Direct Investment Fund had been whitewashed, to try to recompose a new delivery promise. Until today, that was not achieved. The Russians warned the Argentines that the delay in the certifications of production in the laboratories of India and South Korea -they must send their vaccines to Moscow- made it impossible to start a massive vaccination campaign in Argentina.
Paradoxically, this lack will allow the Government to once again present to the opposition the idea of modifying the electoral calendar, with the argument that the August vote established by law will take place with much of the population still unvaccinated.
This health situation, they admit in the Government, is combined with the electoral need of a ruling party that today perceives that it does not have months ahead to recover the voters who in 2019 opted for the Frente de Todos and who in recent months left the Government by the economic crisis, for the errors in the handling of the pandemic and also for the weight that Cristina Kirchner gained and the harshest Kirchnerism in the decisions and public positions of the Casa Rosada.
In the ruling party they are determined to keep the President away from media discussion due to the electoral calendar. “We do not want Alberto to promote the debate and we do not want him to close it. That is why those who are in charge are the governors ”, he explains to Clarion one of the officials who weighs in the electoral strategy of the Frente de Todos. The reason for this collection is simple: the Government is not able to continue announcing many more things that are not being fulfilled.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/changes-in-the-paso-obstacles-with-vaccination-allow-the-government-to-insist-with-its-plan/
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