Duel in the sun: single ballot vs. Alberto in Hollywood

the ruling party Freeze Congress until further notice. In Deputies he leaves the initiative to the opposition, which believes it has the quorum to start one of the most strident sessions of the year this Wednesday: the single ballot.

In the Senate, the ruling party promises a session without nervous problems – agreements, etc. – for June 24, at the height of the winter break, which could last until after the World Cup, that fetish date that politicians believe may be the black swan that changes their lives. It never happens, and it often thwarts expectations that the fate of a government depends on the collective humor generated by the passion of the multitudes. The World Cup is a black swan.

The single ballot has the support of more than 119 seats and can be approved. It does not change the world, but corner the ruling party in the “old”. A unbeatable opportunity to appear successful – quorum and approval of an electoral reform sentenced to death in the Senatewho will reject it.

The government has scenario responses, which also give the opposition the initiative: showing Alberto Fernández in Los Angeles together with Joe Biden is a capitulation to the flags of his opponents.

Friendship with the United States, the recognition that inflation, default and fiscal deficit are bad, are the slogans of those who ruled before and those who had to contradict.

That session of the Deputies and the presidential trip, of tenuous thickness, will occupy the week. Likewise, the opposition is careful to alert its lawmakers between this weekend and Wednesday. Nobody is missing.

Two agents who had tickets to Los Angeles for the Summit got off the plane. On the day of the special session he had to facilitate the medical treatment of another colleague. The time, 10.30, was requested to avert the threat that the ruling party will repeat the double call, with another session that washes away the victory that the opposition savors.

Audacity: to flatter the public of the banner

After three years of government, the turning point is moving. Will the government believe that with these gestures it will win the public vote of the “banderazo”, which does not vote for Peronism, and which in 2019 made him win Macri-Pichetto in 5 of the 7 largest districts in the country, even if they lose the elections? is a gesture of candor by betting on a mobility of the vote that is unprecedented in Argentinathe country of the stable vote.

To believe that a change of agenda drags the vote as if it were a meter applause, that ingenuity of black and white TV that distributed prizes and punishments is as naïve as trusting that quarrels and meetings at the top will allow the votes of the bases. Experience shows rather the opposite: the prosperity of candidates is explained by their ability to understand their electorate and not by the illusion of being able to drag them to the convictions of the management.

In 2013 it was not that Massa drove crowds to dissent from official Peronism. On the contrary, the public dragged him into dissidence. He had already made him lose in 2009 by going on the list with Kirchner and Scioli, who the management considered unbeatable. The voter did not think the same way. And when he returned in 2019 it was because his audience left him alone and Massa I had no choice but to change my skin if I didn’t want to lose.

Without power, there is no heaven

In politics there are no mysteries or labyrinths from which to come out with alchemy or marketing. Enough with to carefully read the agenda of society, which the exhausted system of political parties no longer understands.

Analysts Bickerton and Invernizzi (Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics, Oxford, 2021) describe the new formula, which is techno-populism, in countries such as Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain.

Or the post-party recipe, which allowed Angela Merkel to govern four terms in Germany (16 years in power) thanks to a political flexibility that a Sergio Massa would envy. We pass from the social Christianity of a German Thatcher to an alliance with the Greens. In her second term it cost her, as a nuclear physicist, to sacrifice her country’s nuclear program to support that alliance. To reach your third term, you have opened the borders to immigrants from Syria. Each cycle with a different coalition.

What interested you most, the Thatcher economy of 2005, the environment in 2009 or the European demography in 2013? Indeed, it has tried to provide solutions to the problems of every moment without ideological commitments, for the sole purpose of remaining in power. A classic that repeats itself in these parts: governability is more important than the government’s agenda, which sacrifices itself and adapts to the main objective, which is to remain in power at all costs. Without power, there is no heaven.

The evil of weak governments

What interests this government most, in the debate that divides it most, the agreement with the IMF? The health of the finances of a country that has gone through 70 years of inflation and 20 of default – apart from Macri’s first two? Or raise the IMF flag to cling to a handrail in front of an electorate that already withdrew 5 million votes 3 months ago? Definitely governability, once again, above the program.

It is the evil of weak governments. This is above the bad faith or inefficiency of officials. It is the exercise of politics as an art and science of the possible and where, always, everything ends badly. Meanwhile, Argentina has 50% of its informal economy and accumulates hidden wealth which is what it feeds, beyond horrific indicators of inflation, unemployment, poverty, country risk, etc.

Countries qualify because they are the places people want to go and live. In the region that touches us, people want to come and live in Argentina, because beyond these indicators, there is a wealth that is nourished more and better than elsewhere. This explains extravagances such as the fact that Argentina is second in the ranking of world demand for tickets and tours to attend the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. It will not be because there is no money.

Macri’s best friend debuts in Congress

The opposition exaggerates the effects of electoral reforms, in a country where none of its serious problems stems from the quality of the electoral system.

The ruling party plays down the project in a Darwinian gesture of rejection of the Single Ticket. “It’s not what people are talking about,” their spokespersons reply. They repeat the same thing when they ask the government its predilection for dictators. The argument is weak, because unsatisfied demands are a serious general list – inflation, unemployment, insecurity, etc.

The opposition’s response to the retaliation of the ruling party in the Senate is to broaden the debate to other reforms. It involves the legislative debut of José Torello, the man closest to Macri in Congress. He is now proposing a new organic reform of the electoral code that goes beyond the single ballot.

Open the formula for integrating a deputy candidate from the list of losers; restores the vote of Argentines residing abroad, including the possibility of voting by post; prevents access to elected offices for persons convicted of corruption-related offenses – the so-called “clean sheet”.

It also attempts to punish political transfuguism with the exclusion from Congress of legislators who change the party or group for which they have been elected, in express contradiction with the will of the voters. The figure usurps the motto of the “moral contract”, registered trademark of Elisa Carrió, which the representatives should respect. It would be nice.

Life for the single ballot?

The purpose is break down the wall that Peronism raises around the Single Ticket, which is one of the few opposition projects against which Cristina de Kirchner has argued hard. In particular, to hide the cracks that the lead commission of the project, Constitutional Affairs, is chaired by Guillermo Snopek, a pioneer of his party in favor of the BU.

He said that if the deputies approve the project, he wants to see the details first to tell if he has changed his mind. Nobody will give their lives for the single ballot, especially when the debate serves the opposition to subject the ruling party to defeat. Snopek will also be looking to run for governor in Jujuy next year, or to renew his seat as a senator. What is less convenient for him is to promote a distance from Peronism.

The Court and the miracle of the multiplication of blocks

Torello – who is Snopek’s deputy for Constitutional Affairs – has been in charge of the PRO since its founding and negotiated judicial matters with Peronism during the Macri administration. This year he was able to integrate the Council of the Judiciary, but the blockade proposed by Luis Juez.

Perhaps he foresaw that it would not be easy for the opposition to take advantage of the reform imposed by the Court’s ruling. Peronism has opened the shortcut of the pampas of the twin blocks; he created a second minority and retained a seat on the Council. Torello, from Baquiano in judicial matters, has until October the mission of imagining something so that this turncoat of the two Peronist blocs is not perpetuated in the following 4 years. Time is running out and justice must resolve the demands of the opposition and the judge against the appointment of the Peronist “minority” Martín Doñate.

The mess will end up in court, which was sworn in with a tuner who recalls that the validity of his titles is questioned in court, but that, at the date of the oath, there was no resolution that could constitute an impediment (Agreed on 11/22). With that, he left open the possibility that it could be undone at some other stage in the process. For example, when the appeal comes into your hands.

There will be a rush between now and November to remedy or perpetuate the two block ploy. The strongest argument against it is that majorities and minorities are the result of the popular vote, not a leadership framework. Justice is a power under the supervision of the Council, legitimized by the vote. If he canonize the miracle of the multiplication of blocks to manipulate artificial majorities and minorities, he will feed his own vulnerability in the face of those who want to jybarize it.

AQ