What would you think if Cristina Fernández returned to control and dominate Argentina?
Could something like this even happen?
Dear viewers, last April 2019 a survey caused a political earthquake in Argentina.
An earthquake that also had significant economic consequences.
You see, the consultancy firm Isonomia, a company that actually has close ties to the
government and has been working with Macri for several years, noted that if the next
Argentinian elections reached the second round – the first round will be held on October
27th and November 24th for the second round – if that happened, Cristina Fernandez de
Kirchner’s hypothetical candidacy would win over the current president, Mauricio Macri.
Right now, poor economic performance is causing support for President Macri to plummet.
Inflation is extremely high, tariff increases and the sense that nothing has really changed
on a political level, has caused Mauricio Macri’s popularity to drop like a rock.
But just a second folks.
On May 18th, a second political earthquake shook Argentina.
For the first time in history, a vice presidential candidate named her choice for president.
You can not change a country only with a good government, in its three branches of power.
To change a country you need good government and a good society.)
Cristina Fernandez made her decision to stand for election public... but not as number one,
as number two, as a vice presidential candidate.
Former Argentine President Kirchner Seeks Return to Power, as Vice President.
New York Times)
You heard that correctly.
In the end, the Kirchnerist candidate will be Alberto Fernández, Néstor Kirchner’s
Chief of Staff.
He also held that post in Cristina’s government for one year.
I’ve asked Alberto Fernandez to lead the formula that we will run together, he as the
presidential candidate and I as vice-president, to participate in the upcoming primary, open,
simultaneous and mandatory elections”.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner)
Folks, faced with this leadership scenario at least three questions surface:
The first is easy; Why on earth did Kirchner decide to do this?
This takes time, effort, perseverance with the objectives.
Nobody can do things in two or three years)
Well... let's say that the answer has a lot to do with her currently good popularity.
As we’ve seen, for the first time since 2015, several polls placed Kirchner as the
winner for not only the first but also the second round.
And in the meantime address all friends, colleagues, officials who have some dollars in fixed term
deposits.
You Moreno, right?)
Now, just a second.
The same forecasts also indicated a high number of undecided votes.
And, folks, this was very clear to election experts: the fear of Kirchner’s return,
once it’s election time, could shift many votes back to the current ruling party.
However, with this decision, two things happen: on the one hand, fear of the former president
is somewhat diluted; she’s no longer a presidential candidate.
And on the other, the new duo could reach voters that Kirchner alone would never have
reached.
Allow me to explain: Alberto Fernandez’s candidacy puts Regenerationism on the table,
his discourse is more moderate and there’s the idea that the new duo would apply different
policies to those implemented by Cristina in the past.
Which is essential to achieve victory.
Because of course, if you want to win the elections, you can’t just count on your
stalwarts.
you have to convince new voters while also taking care not to mobilize your rival’s
vote.
As Vice President, Cristina contributes all her electoral strength without causing excessive
fear.
So, based on this scenario, folks, the former president’s decisions multiply her options
of returning to power.
And that’s what she cares about the most.
Not just because she likes power, but because she needs to maintain the rights that go with
being a high level politician in order to survive.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner needed to participate in the elections due to a legal
situation, which we already discussed here on VISUALPOLITIK.
The ex-president has ten prosecutions and five preventive detention requests.
Folks, the only reason she isn’t already in jail is because she still has her senator
privileges.
The Senate, which is dominated by the Peronists, has not withdrawn them.
So, the first question, why did she decide to run as Vice President? has been answered.
The second question is, can this pairing really win the elections?
I mean, Are we serious?! after the previous government’s terrible results and all the
corruption?
“They extend Cristina Kirchner’s processing in notebook scandal,
Judge Claudio Bonadio considered her a “co-author of five other acts of bribery” and raised
the embargo against her to 80 million pesos.”
Profile)
Well… yeah.
At least that’s what the voter intention studies say.
Surveys such as those of Analía del Franco or Ricardo Rouvier y Asociados placed Kirchner
ahead with an advantage of 9.5 and 4 points respectively.
We can also find surveys, even more important ones, which put Macri in the lead, but by
an increasingly smaller margin.
And of course, now with the new formula many of the fears of Kirchnerism have diluted,
particularly because Alberto Fernández himself was very critical of the former President:
“It’s hard to find something virtuous in Cristina’s last mandate”.
Alberto Fernández, 2015)
"She even said that Germany was worse than us in terms of poverty, maintained that the
stocks didn’t exist and that inflation didn’t matter to the end, that’s denial, a stubborn,
sometimes absurd denial" Alberto Fernández, 2015)
That is, how, overnight, the Kirchner-created formula can be seen as a sign of change.
Something like...
“Hey, we learned from our mistakes, but our intentions were always good, now we’ve
got it figured out and the important thing isn’t a person’s job title but the project”.
Incredible, huh?
Now, let's be clear.
you can’t really say that this is a surprising or exceptional scenario, not at all.
It’s part of a fairly predictable trend.
Macri has gone from leading the polls in January to drawing with Cristina in March and then
to lagging behind her in April.
As incredible as it may seem, according to the polls, Christina’s support hasn’t
stopped rising.
The former president has gone from being a headache to Peronism, which wanted to revamp
its image to becoming its best wild card, a chance of recovering the government of the
republic.
At the moment it seems like the evolution of the economy will be the decisive factor.
If things weren’t so bad, perhaps even Macri could get enough support from the undecided
voters to remain in the Casa Rosada.
The problem?
As things stand, improving the economic situation in the short term seems quite complicated.
And that’s Kirchner’s best card right now, one more slip and Macri is sent to the
bench.
You see, the Argentine economy is going through a very, very fragile timet.
Inflation in March was 4.7%.
That’s the rate for one month, not one year.
2019 could close with a 35 to 50% inflation rate; the peso just keeps falling against
the dollar, stocks aren’t doing well either, the country’s risk is now over 1000 points
and the country is still in recession.
Folks, the race between Macri and Kirchner’s hypothetical candidacies had become a race
to be the least bad in the eyes of public opinion.
And no, this is not a criticism, it’s simply fact:
Both Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Mauricio Macri are reaping very negative evaluations
from the Argentinians.
In the case of the current president, according to surveys, up to 84% of Argentinians have
a negative opinion of him.
On the other hand, though it may seem incredible given all the scandals, the former president’s
data are somewhat better, but not that much.
In her case, the negative opinion score is 76%
But now with the arrival of Alberto Fernández things are different.
The new candidate is less "tainted" than the former president.
I mean, I don’t think that instead of going back five years with president Cristina, we
go back fifteen to something similar to Néstor, lowering Cristina and raising Alberto Fernández
means a substantial change for the economy or for people's lives.
I don’t think so.)
So, the third and most important question based on what we’ve seen would be: What
consequences would the victory of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner
have and on what kind of public policies would they bet?
Well, it turns out we don’t even have to wait until October to start answering.
You see, the mere fact that Kirchner became a favorite in the polls has already made all
international investors very, very nervous.
Well, perhaps it’s better to say, even more nervous than they already were.
And that has translated into a new drop of the peso against the dollar.
Which may have also fueled the idea of ​​this new and surprising formula.
Now, why so much nervousness?
Because it was assumed that Cristina’s return to power would mean a return to the same ultra-interventionist
policies and tons of public spending, as in the previous stage.
Ok, Macri didn’t lead to any great change either, but if Cristina returned, any possibility
of Argentina changing – and don’t tell me it doesn’t need a change – would go
out the window.
The simple fact that Kirchner took the lead in the polls fueled investors' fear of a new
and upcoming Argentine default.
And, folks, that makes things even worse... to such an extent that even some analysts,
such as Carlos Malamud, have warned of a forthcoming exchange run – that is, the peso will sink
even more because everyone will want to get rid of that currency – if Kirchnerism continues
to improve its chances of getting back in power.
In any case, regardless of whether Macri wins or loses the elections, Argentina’s current
situation is complicated.
The government will have to return a whopping 34 billion dollars in 2020, in a context of
severe economic recession and with a peso that is depreciating at full speed.
Argentina is at a crossroads: its debt in dollars is huge, accounting for almost 90%
of the GDP, a figure that won’t stop increasing due to the peso’s collapse.
The more the peso falls, the greater the burden of the debt in dollars for the Argentine economy.
The probability that Argentina will not succeed in paying this debt within one presidential
term is high.
Yes, the probability of default is high, but it isn’t a fact.
The situation is not yet irreversible and fortunately it seems that almost all political
leaders are clear on this.
The fact that Cristina has decided to run as Vice President in Alberto Fernández’s
candidacy could be a good test.
After all, as we’ve already seen, Alberto Fernández was very critical of Cristina Fernández’s
management.
However...
Argentina does need a total change of course.
And, to be frank, Alberto Fernández doesn’t seem so committed to leading that change given
his current running mate is the former president.
Don’t you think?
And folks, that is what leads us directly to this video’s main question:
Will the new government, be it Macri, Fernandez or any other candidate, be willing to carry
out that massive change?
Leave your answer in the comments as well as in the survey.
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