IMF: Without dialogue with Cristina Kirchner, Alberto Fernández will continue the debate in the Senate through the governors

“It's all settled.” With this sentence, an official of the Presidency summed up yesterday the confidence Alberto Fernández has about the outcome of the expected debate in the Senate over the agreement with the IMF, which will take place this afternoon from 14 o'clock. However, the head of state will be forced to monitor the session through the justicialist senators and governors. The bridges are broken with the president of the Senate, Cristina Kirchner, who, on the other hand, at the peak of the internal crossings in the ruling party, has not yet confirmed whether she will be present in the compound today.

The Government assumes that, after the approval of Deputies, with the support of Juntos for Change and part of the Frente de Todos, the discussion on tables in the upper house will end in the adoption of the law that Casa Rosada and the Ministry of Finance, led by Martín Guzmán, need to submit to the international organization for consideration by the Executive Board next week and approved in time to meet the payment of $2.8 billion due next Tuesday.

The President will follow the discussion in the Senate - which will take place within the framework of a strong security operation after last week's incidents - from Salta, where he will travel today to participate in a proselytizing-style activity for the delivery of housing, within the framework of the “relaunch” of his government in an early campaign mode. But he will have a constantly focused eye on the development of legislative discussion. It won't be as easy as in deputies. The relationship is very tense with the Vice President, who has been questioning the Congressional security operation since Friday for the stone attack on her office and is beating the agreement along the lines of her son, Máximo Kirchner, who voted against last week.

Without the reports of Sergio Massa - who on Thursday, as president of the Chamber of Deputies, kept him informed about the course of the negotiations for the votes - the president will have to use other interlocutors acting below the Senate leadership to obtain key information from inside the compound.

To evaluate the evolution of the debate in real time, official sources said, it will use the reports of the bloc president, José Mayans, who, despite his closeness to the Vice President, worked to facilitate approval in response to the demands of provincial executives, reluctant to receive the impact of a default; and the Chief of Staff, Juan Manzur, who travels north with Fernández and will be in contact with senators related to the governors with whom he has a fluid relationship: Ricardo Quintela (La Rioja); Raúl Jalil (Catamarca); and Osvaldo Jaldo (Tucumán). In the afternoon, the Secretary for Parliamentary Relations, Fernando “Chino” Navarro, will also be at the Congress Palace, who, in addition to being the leader of Movimiento Evita, has an office in the Casa Rosada and in recent days also contacted several legislators to try to add support.

Manzur was heavily intervening in the “poroteo”, more because of his nexus with the governors - he is the provincial chief on leave of Tucumán - than as chief of staff. Last week he received Mayans in his office at Casa Rosada to draw up the parliamentary strategy to sanction the project. And yesterday his vice president, Jorge Neme, invited Chaco Senator María Inés Vergara Pilatti to his office to add beans to the vote.

The legislator herself seems reluctant to accompany. On Tuesday, he agreed to a meeting in the Senate, organized by Cristina Kirchner's hillside, Oscar Parrilli, with a former Belgian IMF official, Eric Toussaint, where the conversation had a clear tone of condemnation against the payment of the debt to the Fund. The conclave included Kirchner legislators or Kirchner philos who voted against the agreement: deputies Paula Penacca, Gabriela Estévez and Florencia Lampreabe; and their counterpart from the Front Patria Grande, close to Máximo Kirchner, Itai Hagman. There were also Senators Guillermo Snopek and Matías Rodríguez, which was read in the Government as a gesture that both, like Pilatti, will vote against it.

Kirchnerism has already given ample evidence, with Cristina Kirchner and Oscar Parrilli at the head, that it will resist the agreement until the end. At the legislative level, but also, most likely, during the implementation of the economic measures required by the Fund during the next two years of national administration. However, the Government is confident that at least 20 of the 35 legislators that make up the Frente de Todos bloc will accompany the initiative.

The ground is not completely paved, either, in the opposition. In recent days, loud internal noises have been heard in Juntos for Change in the face of the debt debate, after the PRO proposed not to vote on the agreement with the IMF if the Government raised withholdings, following the threats of agriculture to the agricultural sector following the rise in primary commodity prices in the international market for the war in Ukraine. In the last few hours, this possibility was practically ruled out and the President sought an agreement with the producers. Meanwhile, the UCR and the Civic Coalition remain firm in the position of benefiting the government, which has already yielded by reforming the bill in such a way that only indebtedness is voted on and not the economic program, as demanded by the hard changers.

Beyond the blows in the opposition coalition and the rejection of Kirchnerism, the Government is very confident that it will get the votes and the numbers are closing for now. Alberto Fernández is “calm”, they assured in his environment. The background of Members; the private dialogues of recent days; and the unconfrontational style of the debate in the Budget Committee - the only one to which the project was turned to accelerate times - gave the Executive the guidance that it will have the support of the opposition of Juntos for Change and half of the Frente de Todos bloc, which, as in Deputies, will vote divided.

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