In a session that lasted almost seven hoursthe chief of staff, Juan Manzur, provided for the first time a management report in the Senate of the Nation. With a Cristina Fernández de Kirchner present in the first section of the session, Manzur defended the economic course of the national government, referred to the gap in subsidies for transport between the City and the interior of the country –anticipating a 40 percent increase in City fares– and identified the inflation as “the main problem to address“. After having answered in writing the 915 questions that had been sent to him, Manzur also had his informative debut facing the questions and Chicanas that were emerging from the senators of Together for Change in the room.
“We are coming out of a pandemic, something that did not happen more than 100 years ago in world history, and in the process we find ourselves with a war in Europe,” Juan Manzur began developing in his first speech as chief of staff reporting to the Chamber High. During his presentation, which lasted until almost 9 at night, the Tucuman governor on leave highlighted the country’s economic recovery process after the pandemic. “In 2021 the economy argentina grew 10.3 percent“, he repeated on several occasions and took the opportunity to defend the measures implemented by the national government. “In the framework of recovery there is a fact that has a strong impact that was the drop in unemployment, which reached 7 percent”he stressed while further up, sitting at the Senate presidency’s desk, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner listened to him.
The presence of vice president in the enclosure was brief, but it was not exempt from winks. Already at the beginning of his report, when he referred to the policies adopted by the pandemic, Manzur took the opportunity to point out the “honor” that he had been Minister of Health during the CFK government. Half an hour before, even, the man from Tucuman maintained a meeting with her in her Senate office which, as indicated by the vice president, was developed in very good terms. A gesture within the framework of the internal one that crosses the Front of All. Within minutes of beginning his defense of the government’s economic course, however, CFK left the room and spent the rest of the day in his office.
The price escalation of recent months had a special chapter in Manzur’s exhibition. “Inflation, there is no doubt and we have to take care of it, is the main problem to attend to. It is a long-standing phenomenon and it responds to many causes,” he warned, inscribing the causes in the rise in international prices due to the war in Ukraine. “We have to strengthen the recovery of workers’ wages, with parities that exceed inflation“, he maintained, almost as a response to many of the internal criticisms that the national government receives from Kirchnerism, but categorically defending the economic plan designed by the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán: “The pillars of this gradual strategy will not be resolved overnight. The gradual process of reducing inflation has to do with a gradual reduction of the fiscal deficit along with a gradual reduction of Central Bank financing to the Treasury”.
Manzur also defended the agreement with the IMF. “We had to avoid the specter of default,” he said, agreeing to move forward with a distribution more “federal” transport subsidies, in line with what the Peronist governors (and non-Peronists too) are demanding. “The asymmetries exist but we are not going to solve them from one day to the next. But each one has to take care of his own.Why all Argentines have to pay the subsidy to those who live in the City of Buenos Aires?”, he maintained, and announced that an increase of 40 percent for the ticket in CABA was “in process”.
At the time of the first questions, the senators of Together for Change took the opportunity to chicanear to the Chief of Staff for having taken eight months to present himself to present his management report in Congress (the last time that an Alberto Fernández Chief of Staff set foot in the Legislative Palace was in August of last year, when Santiago Cafiero still held that position prior to cabinet changes after the PASO defeat). The questions revolved mainly around the shortage of fuel –especially diesel–, energy and air connectivity. “You are not exempt as a governor on leave from the serious situation that our province is experiencing due to the lack of diesel,” denounced the senator from Tucumán. Beatriz Ávila. “We have to listen to the president who says that Argentina was one of the countries that best coped with the pandemic, I remind him of the VIP vaccination”, he joined the Chicanas Mario Faid. More curious, however, was the intervention of Cordoba Carmen Alvarez Riverowho, holding up a photo of a woman with his two children – whom he baptized “Karina T” -, he assured that she had asked him to ask Manzur if they wanted them “poorer every day”.
Manzur answered some of the questions above and in a calm tone, but the real ones in charge of replicating the opposition’s Chicanas were the senators of the Frente de Todos. “It was said that decisions were not very transparent, that there was a lack of vaccines, that health is not a priority of our government. It is hard to hear that from those who left the country without a Ministry of Health,” he accused. Pablo Yedlin. “I was listening to Macri and many senators that it could not be that Aerolineas lost 700 million dollars per year. Not only is it not true, but if you look at the balances you will see that in 2018 the balance was negative 552 million, when in 2015 we left it with a negative 200 million, in 2021 it was 438 million: that is, Macri had a worse impact on the economy than the pandemic,” said Mariano Recalde..
“Argentina is going through a highly difficult moment. And what did the opposition do? They wanted to deepen the crisis and that is why they did not vote on the Budget. They have a destructive vision,” accused, towards the end, the head of the ruling interbloc, Jose Mayans. As is often the case each time closing speeches are held, Mayans crossed fiercely with the radical senators Luis Naidenoff and Alfredo Cornejoto the point that Cornejo at one point yelled at him “Shut up and listen“. Already when the clock was about to strike 9 at night, however, Mayans went on to highlight that it was needed “a policy of social justice“, he thanked the presence of Manzur and the Minister of the Interior Wado De Pedro –which was added at the end of the session– and put an end to the meeting.