Argentine President Mauricio Macri, in the threatening tone with which he communicated with the people he governed during these almost four years of government, had warned us in a campaign spot that “if I go crazy, I can do you a lot of harm”. It seems that the day of the loss of sanity arrived.

Last Sunday, before the first provisional results of the Simultaneous and Mandatory Open Primaries were known, he admitted that his party had made a very bad choice and reproached the voters who “did not understand what they were doing” and without offering election numbers, invited everyone to go to sleep.

A few minutes later, Minister Rogelio Frigerio announced what seemed impossible, the pre-candidate Alberto Fernández, for the Frente de Todos obtained more than 47% of the preferences and Macri himself barely scratched more than 32%. Without being definitive results, this trend broke down the parity scenario on the horizon.

But the rows in front of the result stressed up the officialism. Some ministers made their positions available and the press conferences offered, although they spoke of the possibility of recovering electorally in October, showed a dismissiveness and contempt for the so clearly expressed popular will.

Revenge did not take long to arrive and the government released a savage devaluation of the currency. The containment they had carried out until August 11 to improve their profile in the elections with the image of a government capable of containing the price of the dollar, was abandoned. The US currency increased its value and Macri bets on economic terrorism as the last attempt to capture votes.

However, it is also possible that he will not try to capitalise electorally on this economic turmoil and is only magnifying his economic benefits and those of his officials and friends, in order to try in three months to keep all the possible profits that they will not be able to obtain if the State returns to behave as a mediator between the predatory will and popular interests.

Since the agreement with the International Monetary Fund was confirmed, Argentina is in virtual default, because what is planned as interest payments on loans for 2020 is impossible for the Argentine people to assume. So, although until now Lagarde and company wanted to impose their conditions, the organised popular resistance stopped the most bloodthirsty measures, which were postponed until a future scenario of greater economic anguish. Macri was confident that in his second term he could “go the same way, faster,” as he had announced to the international businessmen who visited him.

Macri demanded that those who won the elections on Sunday “take charge” of the economic disaster that occurred this black Monday and said he was “willing to help”. The strange thing is that he pretends to govern a force that has not yet won an electoral victory, but rather the greatest support for him to run for office. And, in addition, assuring that they will be re-elected in October, which made the speech psychopathic.

The popular rejection has become explicit and has overflowed the media siege that protected the government since its inauguration at the end of 2015. Neither the dismissal of 6,000 journalists nor the closure of the media prevented people from recognising the deterioration of their purchasing power, the rampant increases in tariffs, the lack of remedies, the abandonment of education and health, the closure of industries, incompetence and the negotiations carried out by the Change alliance since they joined the public policy train.

For Macri, “There are 7.5 million Argentines who understood, and others who did not” and those who did not accompany them with the vote generated economic chaos. At the same time, its candidate for vice-president, Miguel Pichetto, tried to recompose that diagnosis “we don’t blame the people, but it is interesting that people analyze the effects of how they voted, which are developing.

To all this, the patrimony of the officials of Cambiemos was increased with the escalation of the dollar, since their affidavits are made in dollars and with funds that rest in tax havens, since not even madmen would put their patrimony in the hands of themselves.

Macrism has proved to be a political force willing to do anything, so we cannot rule out the most violent and extremist scenarios for these coming weeks, with the possible consequence of self-fulfilling their claims that “Peronism does not let the rest of the parties conclude their mandates”. The madness of the president enables him, according to his statements, to do us a lot of harm. We will have to continue taking care of ourselves collectively.

 

Translation Pressenza London