The anecdote is that in the 1989 Argentine presidential campaign, Carlos Menem and Eduardo Duhalde were in a room of the many hotels in which they stayed during the tour. While Menem was zapping on TV, Duhalde spoke to him of some ideas in case of reaching the government, and mentioned the need to make a “productive revolution.” Menem stopped his attention on the small screen, turned around, and excitedly interrupted him: “That Eduardo, that. We are going to promise a productive revolution! ” Years after the Menem decade, which had nothing revolutionary and much less productive, the former president from La Rioja would confess: “If I had said what I was going to do, no one would vote for me.”
Campaign promises have become a mendacious political device in recent decades. With the traditional political parties in extinction and without the disappeared political platforms, the candidate’s capital is his credibility and his promises, most of the time, unfulfilled when he is already in government.
If today the presidential candidate of Unión por la Esperanza (UNES), Andrés Arauz, man of former President Rafael Correa, reaches the first magistracy of Ecuador, a large part of his success will be due to the promises that take on supreme value -but also from greater responsibility – in a pandemic context. In particular, if they are linked to the solution to that scourge.
“A few months ago I met with the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and he has guaranteed us an endowment of 4.4 million doses to be able to serve you, Ecuadorians,” Arauz promised, looking at the camera, during a presidential debate . On that occasion, he also visited and photographed himself with Cristina Kirchner.
Rafael Correa and Andrés Arauz
In a country like Ecuador, which has been inoculated just over 6 thousand of the 17 million inhabitants it has, the announcement is hopeful or demagogic, nonstop.
The Argentine president had to clarify by letter that the production of the vaccine by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford is an agreement between private parties and that he, in any case, could try to intercede. “In case they consider it necessary and opportune, we will put all our effort to help Ecuador in its negotiations with other suppliers,” Fernández promised. Not much more.
The paradox is that according to Arauz’s partners, from the Democratic Center Movement, the candidate already received a dose of the Sputnik V vaccine in December, when he traveled to the country for the meeting with Alberto Fernández and Cristina. But Arauz is not on the list neither among the essential medical personnel nor in the segment of the elderly in geriatric centers that the Ecuadorian vaccination campaign stipulates as a priority.
Everything is for the presidency.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/elections-in-ecuador-a-candidate-that-promises-millions-of-vaccines-from-argentina-that-do-not-exist/
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