For sixty days now, Alberto Fernández has already taken all the key decisions of the Government without consulting Cristina Kirchner, who angrily decided to get in touch with the tone and content of the negotiations Martín Guzmán held in January with the staff of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The vice president did not share the strategy of the President and his Minister of Economy with the Fund and decided to carry out a tactical retreat pending a political result that she believes is feasible: the failure of the agreement with the IMF and its subsequent palatial revenge.
In this political context, then a state secret, Máximo Kirchner resigned from the presidency of the block of deputies and CFK maintained its public silence regarding Guzmán's talks to reach the Staff Agreement that will now be endorsed by the Senate with a robust and multi-party majority.
With the rupture exposed inside the Palace, Alberto Fernández maintained the forms to prevent the break from becoming a crisis of governance. From Beijing, China, the President told Cristina what his meetings with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had been like, and days later he left her a message for her birthday.
Pure formality. Faced with Alberto Fernández's calls, CFK's usual talkativeness mutated into a cold succession of monosyllables that ultimately ended in his political decision to ignore the messages he received from his WhatsApp and Telegram account to find out how he was doing after being attacked in his Senate office.
Gabriela Cerruti is preparing her Thursday lectures. Adjust the details with Alberto Fernández and personally write the presentation he will make to the journalists of the Casa Rosada. From this perspective, it was a political decision that the spokeswoman will confirm - in public - that the personal relationship between the President and the Vice-President is no longer does exist.
Alberto Fernández has an agenda marked by the vote on the agreement with the IMF in the Upper House, the announcements launching the war on inflation in Tucumán and the disbursements that the Fund must make to avoid default in March. And once these steps are fulfilled, the President will have already made a decision that will mark his last two years of presidential term.
That momentous political decision needed official recognition from Spokeswoman Cerruti. The head of state acknowledges in privacy that CFK ran away from key decisions, and its allies in the city councils, Congress, unions, social movements and governorates, demanded a sign of power announcing that the final bid had begun.
“The President communicated, without having any answers, with the Vice-President, as well as with her private secretary,” Cerruti confirmed when asked at the press conference whether it was true that CFK had not answered Alberto Fernández's WhatsApp and Telegram messages.
It was the political signal that the President's allies were waiting for.
Alberto Fernández expects the position of Cristina and Máximo to have a strong defeat in the Senate and is preparing a package of economic measures that are not consulted with the vice-president and the leader of the Campora. They have the information of their loyal ministers and secretaries, but they are on the sidelines of all political decisions.
However, CFK and Máximo manage a lot of spaces of power in the public administration, in Congress and in the city councils. That power is strong enough to interfere with the decisions made by Alberto Fernández and his own ministers.
Inflation strikes the hardest hit sectors and the war in Ukraine aggravates the situation in Argentina. The President still explores what to do to prevent the disintegration of the Front de Todos from multiplying the economic and social crisis.
At Casa Rosada, two options are analyzed with their own explanation: political razzia or simulated peaceful coexistence.
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