Alberto Fernandez in Spain: professor of the politics of failure

Alberto Fernandez enters his final week as president (Photo: NA - JUAN VARGAS)

One of the virtues of Alberto Fernandez is that he himself describes the depths to which he is capable of plunging. Four years ago, when Cristina Kirchner chose him as the Kirchnerism's presidential candidate and offered him refuge from court cases, the president revealed that he didn't really want to be a candidate, much less president.

Alberto Fernandez wanted to be the Argentine ambassador to Spain. That was what he was going to discuss with Cristina when she called him to make him an offer. He had never imagined that the woman who had led the Peronistas for twenty years would offer him a candidacy for''the post of president. Alberto, far more sensible than Cristina, realized that he was not worthy of the position. Events over the next four years made him right.

When Sergio Massa won the election in the first round, the president thought again about that old idea: to become ambassador to the country ruled by two of his close friends, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and current President Pedro Sánchez. In the latter case, the word "friend" is poetic license, because the socialist leaders smilingly declare that Sanchez is "not a friend of anyone." That's why they call him "Dog Sanchez. "

The dream of occupying a beautiful mansion on Fernando El Santo Street, where the Argentine embassy in Madrid is located, crumbled on November 19 when Javier Miley defeated Sergio Massa''on the ballot.

This is a strange set of circumstances for a young country. It was much easier for Alterto to become president than ambassador to Spain.

Last weekend, Spanish newspaper El Mundo published an article claiming that Alberto Fernandez would become an advisor to President Pedro Sanchez. This is not a nonsensical hypothesis, because every time Alberto visited Spain, Sanchez took the time to meet with him. But the Argentine president himself rejected the possibility in an interview with Noticias Argentinas on Sunday. He acknowledged, however, that he would go to Spain to teach at a Spanish university.

Alberto Fernandez has told his associates that he will return to teach at Camilo Jose Sela University, a private''an educational institution on Almagro Street in Madrid, taught by academic Jorge Santiago Barnes and which had a board of advisors that included three luminaries from Argentina: former Mexican president, businessman and conservative leader Vicente Fox; former Colombian president, liberal Ernesto Samper; and former Argentine president, Peronist Eduardo Dualde. Prior to joining Casa Rosada, Alberto discussed politics in Madrid for the past ten years.

The last time he was there was in early September 2019. He had just won an intraparty election, crushing Mauricio Macri to become America Latin's choice. He was accompanied by future foreign minister Felipe Sola and his transient international policy adviser Marco''Enrique Ominami from Chile. He visited Camilo José Cela to give a lecture for an hour and a half in front of thirty Spaniards and Argentines from the Romantic Left, who asked to take selfies with him and praised him. "How to bring politics to the citizens," was the title of the seminar. He couldn't bring her any closer. Four years later, Javier Milay succeeded him, putting politicians in the frying pan.

Fernandez also told his closest that he might be invited to speak at Salamanca and other Spanish institutions that would invite him when he became ex-president very soon.

Alberto Fernandez believes that the version about his alleged help to Pedro Sanchez comes from his enemies in the Spanish Popular Party and Vox,''the far-right party that's closest to Milha. So close that its leader, Santiago Abascal, will be one of the star guests at the new Argentine president's inauguration ceremony. He attributes the same political origin to a rumor about alleged real estate holdings, which he says he categorically rejects.

A group of Argentines living in Madrid, including some who work near the Popular Party, are planning to organize some form of protest against the possibility of the president living near them in the Spanish capital. This seems to be an exaggeration, especially if Alberto doesn't take public''positions and should not be in charge of court cases.

Since the disastrous defeat of Massa, which is also the defeat of his disastrous government, Alberto has started talking as if triple digit inflation, financial collapse and 130,000 pandemic deaths were not part of his ineffectiveness, his fear of Cristina and his irresponsibility. This weekend, he surprised with wacky remarks that are no longer laughable.

Alberto Fernandez believes that the version about his alleged help to Pedro Sanchez comes from his enemies from the Spanish Popular Party and Vox, the extreme right-wing party that is closest to Milha. In the mentioned interview, Alberto argues that poverty is wrongly measured and''if there were actually as many poor people as the National Institute of Statistics indicates, Argentina would be imploding. Incredible, but also pathetic. He disputes the measurement made by an official of his government (Marco Lavagna) and fails to take into account that in the four years of his administration the country has really exploded and therefore just lost an election.

Mauricio Macri said that his government should be evaluated at the end of his term on poverty results, and by those numbers he failed.

Poverty during the Alberto Fernandez government was even worse. The 40.1% poverty rate recorded by the National Institute of Statistics in the first half of the year is already outdated information, and current poverty is even higher. And it's not''only according to the National Institute of Statistics. Measurements by the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University converge with official data that poverty exceeds 50% in Buenos Aires and exceeds 60% when it comes to the poverty of children under 14. Children are the poorest part of Argentina's population Alberto.

Besides fantasizing about the poverty data that exploded during his reign, Alberto Fernandez talks about the future of Peronism as if he has some role in this discussion about leadership. He questions Axel Quisillof, who like it or not, was able to win re-election in the depleted province of Buenos Aires. And as upcoming leaders he proposes his friends''Jorge "Coki" Capitanich, Gabriel Catopodis and Victoria Tolosa Paz. The Chaco governor was defeated during an investigation into the disappearance of a girl who had his main political ally as a suspect. And two others are employees of his government, also rejected in the election.

As if no one could know the humiliations he suffered at the hands of Cristina Kirchner, Alberto presents himself as the only fighter who resisted her and boasts that his view is different from the vice president's. The truth is that there was not a single important topic in which the president persisted in expressing his position and the public considered it positive. One minister, Cristian Eduardo De Pedro, went so far as to resign from him, and then''brought himself back into the accounting as if nothing had happened.

The thing in which Alberto Fernández will differ from Cristina Kirchner is the institutional plan. If he hands over power to Javier Milay in Congress this Sunday afternoon, he will become, along with Carlos Menem, another Peronist president who will have handed over the trappings of power to a representative of a different political orientation. Cristina did not want to do that with Macri. This is no small part of the madness that characterizes modern Argentina.

But if the hyperinflation, the 15-fold increase in the dollar and the exponential increase in poverty left by his government are insufficient arguments, one need only recall the countless privileged vaccination scandals, untimely''bought doses for ideological reasons and parties in Quinta Olivos, which Alberto Fernández admits he cannot explain, to consider him the most unsuccessful figure in these forty years of democracy.

Original text: Alberto Fernández encara su última semana como presidente (Foto: NA - JUAN VARGAS)Lo bueno de Alberto Fernández es que él mismo es el que describe los subsuelos a los que es capaz de descender. Hace cuatro años, cuando Cristina Kirchner lo eligió para que fuera el candidato a presidente del kirchnerismo y que la pusiera a cubierto de sus causas judiciales, el presidente contó que en realidad no quería ser candidato, y mucho menos presidente.