“Moderation or People”: the harsh letter of the intellectuals who support Cristina Kirchner with criticism of Alberto Fernández

Under the title “Unity of the popular camp: moderation or people”, intellectuals, academics and cultural leaders who identify with hard Kirchnerism published a letter in which they affirmed that “the unity of the Front of All was already broken in November 2021″, alluding to the defeat in the legislative elections and the “four million voters who accompanied him in 2019 and no longer did so in the mid-term elections.”

The letter came as a response to the statement released last week from a sector closer to Alberto Fernández (“The unity of the popular camp in difficult times”) and in the context of the internal tensions that the Frente de Todos has been going through, much more so after the debate that took place in Congress in in relation to the renegotiation of debt with the IMF.

Some of the signatories were: Teresa Parodi, Eduardo Basualdo, Liliana Herrero, Roberto Salvarezza, Adrian Paenza, Cynthia Garcia, Alberto Kornblihtt, Rita Cortese, Victoria Onetto, Carlos Rozanski, “Dady” Brieva, Artemio Lopez, Daniel Tognetti, Roberto Caballero, “Mempo” Giardinelli, Andrea Varela, Marcelo Figueras, Teresa Parodi, Eduardo Basualdo , Liliana Herrero, Roberto Salvarezza, Adrian Paenza, Cynthia Garcia, Alberto Kornblihtt, Rita Cortese, Noe Jitrik, Victoria Onetto, Carlos Rozanski, Araceli Acorn, Rubén Dri, “Dady” Brieva, Artemio Lopez, Maria Pia Lopez, Daniel Tognetti, Roberto Caballero, Alejandro Kauffe Man, Maria Sondereguer, “Mempo” Giardinelli, Sandra Russo and Maria Seoane.

“We welcome the exchange of ideas and the explicitation of positions and nuances on how to move forward in the construction of the political, economic, cultural, social and Latin American program. Public debate is a strength of every national and popular political project. It is never a weakness”, they said in one of the first paragraphs, as an introductory one. And they argued that “unity is not maintained because it is named”, but that “it is maintained if the policies that gave rise to it continue to be active”, alluding to the repeated demand for “unity” by Albertism.

“Government policy has reached its most tragic point: the preparation of ad scenarios where no announcements are made. It is the failed practice of anticipating policies that do not materialize: the government itself generates expectations and the disappointment of expectations. It is the cruel moment where moderation turns into helplessness. They decide to lower the intensity of politics and, as an unwanted effect, they suppress politics. They propose to go slowly but end up motionless. They pretend to speak softly but become inaudible. Everything that is moderate ends up being weak and without transformative capacity. It is necessary to remember: Governments are not evaluated by their intentions, but by their effectiveness,” they later assured in one of the harshest parts of the letter, after the President announced that last Friday “the war against inflation” began.

They also pointed out: “When you want to talk to everyone, you end up talking to anyone. When you try not to fight with anyone, you end up fighting with everyone. If you are not willing to represent the political base in a primary way, you end up representing no one. Conflict exists: not accepting it, far from broadening the support, dilutes those who do not play a role in political nothingness”.

“The problem of unity is solved by replenishing the origin and target subject of the unit. It is not solved by an appeal to the reduction of intensity (i.e. moderation). The most important problem is not one of speed or magnitude: it is one of policy orientation,” they said in the same direction, highlighting the difference, according to their vision, between “moderation” and “unity”.

The letter of the intellectuals K thus responded to the request of those who support Alberto Fernández's management, who called for the placation of internal crossings and to maintain unity. In fact, yesterday Foreign Minister Santiago Cafiero admitted that “to ignore the fact that the Frente de Todos is going through a critical political moment today would be foolish,” three days after spokeswoman Gabriela Cerrutti trusted that Cristina Kirchner would not respond to the President's messages.

In the same vein, the Kirchner academic and cultural references said: “We insist, on the dimensions of electoral and social representation, the 'Unity' of the Front de Todos was already broken in November 2021 when more than four million voters who accompanied it in 2019 no longer did so in the mid-term elections. Rebuilding it is the goal.”

“When in 2019, compañera Cristina devised and called for the construction of a Front of All as an electoral tool to defeat the most crude neoliberalism, she addressed all the forces of the national-popular camp. The raison d'être of that Front of All was, clearly, not only to defeat Macrismo but to replenish and increase the rights and inclusion policies of the 12 years of national-popular governments mobilizing the people and never moderating their demands or 'sending them to be unsaddled until it clarifies, '” they continued.

At the end, they again charged those who asked for “restraint”: “If an impasse were truly perceived, as the document 'The unity of the popular camp in difficult times' seems to suggest, it would therefore be an irresponsible act, almost on the verge of lese Patria, to leave an organic field to fascism by betting on political moderation. It is not that, because fascism threatens, we must put cold cloths on the people's foreheads, but the other way around: an unmotivated people is the occasion for fascism to grow”.

“The discussion, from our point of view, is about the orientation of public policies that should express the unity of the forces that make up the All Front. As someone said these days: 'The differences we have among those who are debating how best to solve this problem are infinitely smaller than the differences with those who generated this problem'. You get away with more politics and not more confinement. We get out sharing the knowledge of the difficulties with the people, facing them and not avoiding them. It comes out between everyone”, concluded the letter. And the internal part of the ruling coalition is booming.

The full letter:

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