Argentina The president isolated and beaten: Alberto Fernández's depression worries
Anniversary Seven decades of the death of Eva Perón: the day Argentina cried
The president of
Argentina, Alberto Fernández,
gave a rudder this Thursday to get his government out of the deepening crisis in which it is sunk: the head of state fired his Minister of Economy,
Silvina Batakis,
to whom had appointed just three weeks ago, and appointed
Sergio Massa,
until today president of the Chamber of Deputies, as "super minister".
The "super minister" is not an exaggeration: Massa will be in charge of a macro ministry in which Economy, Production and Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries
will be merged .
He will also have control of the relationship with multilateral credit organizations, including the
International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Fernández "decided to reorganize the economic areas of his cabinet for better functioning, coordination and management," says the official statement from the Argentine presidency, which avoids acknowledging the obvious: Massa becomes the strong man of the government, almost a prime minister who overshadows the president himself.
Until today, the head of the
Lower House
of Congress had long sought to take control of the runaway Argentine economy, a country that saw the peso devalue 40 percent in July and inflation skyrocket to rates close to 90% per year.
In fact, Fernández came close to appointing him to that position in early July, after the abrupt resignation of the then minister,
Martín Guzmán.
But the reluctance of the powerful vice president,
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,
and the indecision of the president, led to the appointment of
Silvina Batakis,
an official with no political weight who Fernández made live the most bitter experience of her career.
Batakis learned on the flight from the
United States
to Argentina that the president was deciding on his replacement.
The minister had just appeared before the IMF and the United States
Department of the Treasury
assuring that she had the full support of the ruling Peronism.
She was not like that, and this morning, when she arrived in
Buenos Aires,
she handed in her resignation to the president, which she would end up accepting.
Massa, leader of the
Frente Renovador,
a pan-Peronist party, has historic presidential ambitions.
His bet, in this case, is to become the man who managed to channel the Argentine economic disaster and thus be the candidate of all Peronism for the primary presidential elections of August 2023.
50 years old, Massa was Fernández de Kirchner's chief of staff between 2008 and 2009. Then he distanced himself from the former president, who publicly threatened to put her in jail.
Today they are part of the same government, and the vice president ended up giving the go-ahead so that, starting this Thursday, Massa is the man who does and undoes in the administration of the devalued Fernández.
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