“There are rates that have been frozen for years and years, so it is not that people are raising all the prices they have to pay, which is the case with inflation. What gives a subsidized tariff scheme is greater purchasing power to the salary ”. It was November 2013, and who was defending his management was Axel Kicillof, at that time Cristina Kirchner’s Minister of Economy.
Not because he assumed the Buenos Aires government, Kicillof stopped being Cristina’s main advisor, now in the vice-presidency, in economic matters. The transcended maintain that Kicillof complies with an urgent routine: every day monitor the numbers of the economy national, a ritual that Néstor Kirchner performed every night.
Behind the fight for the resignation of the Undersecretary of Energy, Federico Basualdo, lies a debate between Martín Guzmán and Kicillof and, from the Instituto Patria, the line goes down to the head of Enargas, Federico Bernal and the still undersecretary of Energy, Basualdo.
Cristina and Kicillof are convinced that the only way to win the legislative elections is to avoid significant rate increases so that the inflationary scenario is not even worse. A similar scenario implemented in the last years of Cristina’s government, but they could not avoid the electoral defeat of 2015 against Mauricio Macri. However, in the Christian power plants they believe that this setback had more to do with the election of the candidates -Aníbal Fernández to governor, and Carlos Zannini to vice-president of Daniel Sicoli- than to the economic issue.
In his book “The Three Kirchnerisms”, Matias Kulfas, current Minister of Productive Development, stated that in the Kirchnerist decade the fiscal deficit was produced, among other factors, by the “significant cost of maintaining the subsidy for public services that had such an impact on the trade balance.” That divergence cost Kulfas, a former Felisa Miceli official, rejection of Christianity.
On the other side of Kicillof, Martín Guzmán believes that the dichotomy of rate increase vs. electoral victory is false. The Minister of Economy also wants to win the legislative elections and maintains the idea of a generator state. But it does not validate that the spending points to unproductive subsidies and, above all, that they are not segmented in such a way that what happened in 2015 could happen again: someone with a flat on Libertador avenue, meters from the Palermo forests, he paid less than the owner of a modest home in the interior of the country.
The Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán. Photo: Juan Mabromata / AFP)
Guzmán believes that instead of wasting them on subsidies, spending or issuance should be intended for public works, because it is a rapid generator of employment that ranges from freelancers to formal positions, and includes many sectors and SMEs of production in the chain.
But Guzmán’s proposal does not make a difference because there is no way that it will be taken as a possibility by Cristina Kirchner. The Minister of Economy has had several talks with the vice president; and with Kicillof, but mostly as one more governor. “The Minister of Economy is Guzmán”, they stand out in the Casa Rosada. By having ancestry over Cristina, does Kicillof become a shadow economy minister?
In the area of the Palacio de Hacienda deny that Guzmán I have asked the President that if Basualdo stayed, he was the one who left. Not only He does not think about leaving, unless they throw him outIf not, he will fight from within. And also, he has full support from Alberto.
Even in the Government they maintain that Guzmán will continue advancing in the segmentation of the increases “so that the subsidies do not benefit those who can pay them” and thus try “to give a system of subsidies and reasonable rates to the economy.” Something that the questioned undersecretary of Energy should have done. Although in the Homeland they assure that it did, but that the Economy did not want to sign it.
As an argument in favor of the official’s position, it appears that the governors of the interior of the country have, on average, increased rates in the order of 20%. All the controversy arises over the price of services in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires (AMBA).
“No matter how much they operate from the Instituto Patria, Alberto banks Guzmán. It is also not an ideological question, Basualdo is one of the officials who do not work, saying about them”, they assure in the ruling party.
In Balcarce 50 they try to close the controversy but they are blunt. “We end the novel even though the Instituto Patria does not get tired of operating. President there is only one and they will have to bank it “, indicates a government source. They are the same ones who ensure that when the controversy subsides, “Basualdo is leaving.”
Some members of the cabinet let a lot of discomfort transcend over the denial that emerged from La Cámpora when Guzmán had already agreed with Alberto Fernández and the Chief of Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero, the removal of the undersecretary of Energy.
“They ask for everything but they lost the elections and when they were in government they overturned it. That they stop fucking that alone they don’t even get to the corner. They need us and we need the space between all of us. This bends but does not break, an Alfonsinist would say “, launched, angrily, a historic Peronist legislator.
However, there are officials who The Ministry of the Economy is awarded part of the responsibility in the scandal about the twists and turns around the future of a third-line official like Basualdo. They talk about “bad practice” by leaking the information to the media before it happens and by not having called Basualdo and content to give him the news. That would have caused the anger of Alberto Fernández because, they say, he “does not dismiss his officials through the media.”
“The way they did it to communicate it only delayed the issue longer and now they put Alberto and Cristina stressed by a third-line official”reflects a minister. The problem is that, being Fernández the President, Their credibility is put at risk if part of the Frente de Todos alliance does not comply with and questions their decisions.
Days ago, a former Minister of the Economy assured that “there is a lack of a Minister of Economy with power; but if Guzmán cannot manage an undersecretary of Energy who depends on him, he has to go. “
The point is that Guzmán does not intend to resign despite the fact that, as described by a leader of the Instituto Patria, “It’s a fight between an ant and an elephant”, to describe the minister and vice president.
In Zen mode, Guzmán is willing to fight from within. And he has all the backing of Alberto Fernández. The president knows that if the Minister of Economy decided to leave, with him the albertist management would go, which has the stamp of the President beyond the successive interference of the former president. Cristina Kirchner must also know, but after that, she is aware that there is no return. Neither for the Government nor for the humor of society.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/the-real-dispute-is-between-martin-guzman-and-axel-kicillof/
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