“Macri was superb, mean and insensitive” | Rep …

On a beautiful Saturday afternoon Sergio Massa looks out the window of his office full of Malenas in photo. Massa is the top leader of the Renovating Front, integrated to the Front of All, and first candidate for national deputy for the province of Buenos Aires. Malena Galmarini, his partner, is a candidate for provincial legislator. "Alberto has already left Portugal and returns to Madrid," says Alberto Fernández. "He is very happy because he did very well," he says before the dialogue with Page / 12.

The campaign is about to officially restart. Massa will tour some Conurbano districts and travel inside. Córdoba again, and also Santiago del Estero.

– In the last two years, pollsters first discovered that 60 percent felt opposition. And then they discovered something else: that the opponents were beginning to ask the leaders to come together. Did you perceive that?

– You felt it in the street. They told you: "Stop fighting each other and take out this government." The situation in Argentina from an economic and social point of view is so painful, but so painful, that society no longer forgave us that because of our differences, vanities, selfishness or personal project wishes we would not give an answer to resounding failure of a government in economic, political and social matters. Macri not only failed economically. He failed to unite the Argentines, failed to have a country project, He failed to build the famous dialogue he was proclaiming a while ago.

– Why did it fail?

–It has to do with an owner's look. He thought that the Argentine State was his company and that he was the owner instead of understanding that the presidents must know how to conduct something delegated to them by the sovereign people. Society would not have forgiven us that for personal fights we would not give an answer to the failure of such a government. And we all understood that. And having understood it thus allowed us to build the "All" above the individualities.

– Do you remember your personal moment of understanding? Was there a click?

–Perfectly. It was at a traffic light in Morón. It was a week day in the morning. I went to a retired center with Mirta Tundis and Martín Marinucci. I stopped at the traffic light and a retiree was selling pills. He recognizes me and tells me, almost crying: "Get together and get this guy out, we can't take it anymore." I arrived at the demolished retirement center. The first thing that came up was to tell them what had happened to me. I arrive home at night. Malena had gone to Talar to a neighborhood club and tells me that the children's football teacher told him that the boys fainted because they went without eating. That day was enough. It was to understand that we could not drag the Argentine society to continue living with so much pain and so much pauperization.

–When it was?

–Two or three weeks before the meeting of the four Federal Alternative in Córdoba, at the end of March. At the same time we collected similar experiences from the councilors, the mayors, the legislators from all over the country. We conclude that there was no place for anything other than the construction of a new majority. Then we started chatting with the governors. Many saw the same. And I had been talking with Alberto (Fernández), with Wado (from Pedro), with Máximo (Kirchner) …

–The political and social leaders lately register pain as a great social phenomenon.

– The first reaction to failure has to do with disappointment, especially in the middle class, for deindustrialization, for the lack of policies against inflation, for over-indebtedness and the lack of a present State. To this disappointment is added the pain of millions of Argentines who were in poverty and became destitute. Or that they were in a situation of vulnerability and went into poverty. That pain began to strike in the faces of the leaders in the hand to hand with the people. That pain begins to impose an obligation that is to assume that the task of building a new government and a new majority came.

–It wasn't just the economic crisis.

–Unclear. In 2017 the process was already similar to the current one. Macri could not with inflation in any of the years of his government. Macri manufactured poor throughout each of his years of management. It always generated unemployment. Macri was superb from day one. He had help from Peronism like no other government. However, in the face of that help, all he did was push Peronism to the worst of places, instead of recognizing anything. He was superb, mean, insensitive to the demands of society. Nor did he recognize that the inheritance received was much better than that of other governments since the return of democracy. Macri had tools that even allow him today to reach the end of the mandate in better conditions.

–Which?

–The universal allocation, the retirement moratorium with almost universal coverage in older adults, the ability to borrow because the country was in debt … The problem is that it misused all these tools, wasted them. A hammer helps you nail a nail or break a head. This government used the hammers it had to break heads instead of nail nails.

– At what time do people go from disenchantment to the enough and from the enough to hope?

–The day when society realized that the leaders had learned from the mistakes of the past to give Argentina a country project, Argentina was flooded with hope. The STEP was a wave of hope. The elections of October 27 will also be part of that wave that puts upward social mobility, public education, work and production at the center of the decisions. The important thing to keep in mind is that the wave was built by society. The society was before us. That is why we must understand, too, that what has been built here is not enough. We must find even more Argentines for the huge task that begins on December 11. We want to reach the four million who do not want this government but did not vote for us. We tell them: “Come, we learned to dialogue, we learned to yield. Come because, as Alberto says, we came back to be better. ”

– There was a convergence between the social wave and the assembly of opposition political leaders.

–Not only converges. It also gives us political power around the State.

– Does it demand and at the same time give power?

–Exactly. The demand is going to be great because the deterioration is enormous. The responsibility is greater. Then we must know that on December 11 we must seek a great economic and social agreement even with those who continue to support Macri's failure today. We must be generous and summon them to the construction, or rather to the reconstruction of Argentina.

– Voters or entrepreneurs?

– Voters, businessmen, communicators, political leaders, union leaders, civil society. Our challenge is to hug everyone.

– How was the first reunion with Cristina?

– It was a five-hour talk, very mature, very honest. Of analysis of what happened but especially of analysis of what should happen in Argentina.

– Were there bills?

–Do not. In any case on the part of the two there was self-criticism backward and intellectual honesty forward. We all grew up. We are not the same as eight or nine years ago.

– You said: "We all learned from our mistakes." What did you learn?

– That the construction of a country project is done collectively. That one can have individual goals but not have to put them before the construction of a country project. May the selfish look enclose you. That selfishness dissociates you from the desire of an integrated society. To build a homeland there are no individual projects. In any case there can only be greater or lesser leadership abilities. Another self-criticism: one has to know how to wait and not run and anticipate before the ripening of the fruit of a tree.

– You had a measurement: you were losing votes.

– In any case, it seems to me that electoral contexts are relative at a time in the country like this. It was not at stake who led the opposition but how to put an end to the failure of a government. A meanness to see who is right is almost childish. Time forced us to maturity.

– You spoke several times on December 11. 10th of December…

– On December 10, the command is transferred and Alberto Fernández will assume as the new President of the Republic. And he will be a great President. And the task will be three sides. A macroeconomic and microeconomic start-up side. Another, put a country project that engages everyone. The third, the political dialogue as an instrument for the construction of the two variables.

– On December 11, the International Monetary Fund will continue to exist.

–I have a freedom: today I can say the same as in November last year, when this government called me "antipatria" because I told the Wilson Center in Washington that the agreement with the Fund was dismal and that it had to be redisputed. I still think the same. The agreement with the Fund must be renegotiated. It hurts the development of the Argentine economy. It hurts Argentina's credibility in the markets because the staggering makes the country as choked. Maturities meet. The Government signed a quick agreement to obtain disbursement of dollars without looking at the economic development of Argentina. It ended up happening that the world today does not believe the agreement that Macri signed with the Fund. He does not believe it is possible to fulfill it. The Government signed an agreement badly and to the hurried ones to manotear dollars to the Fund. Why is electoral legitimacy important? Why do you have to build a huge new majority? Because we need to show the Fund and the world that the failure of Macri and the Fund's recipe are not only in which we have the responsibility to govern but in the vast majority of Argentines. We need to show that we have the support of society to rediscut that agreement. We want to comply, but on the basis of reasonableness, not from the pain of the people, the closure of SMEs, to turn off the domestic market, to spot the dollars of Argentines (which are for development) and pay debt. Everything must be done together. We want a fiscal surplus, have a competitive exchange rate and create an exporting Argentina that manufactures the dollars needed to produce and pay.

– Alberto promises to comply with the Fund if the Fund gives Argentina time. But the IMF could insist on its usual booklet: deprive Banco Nación, destroy public retirement …

– But in the self-criticism of the 2002 Fund an analysis appears on its own recipes on the Argentina case. In an agreement ten times smaller than this one of Macri, which is the largest agreement in the history of the IMF, the largest disbursement in its history that represents 60 percent of the Fund's capital, the agency already stated that these policies did not guarantee the payment. Argentina can pay if it exports, if it grows, if it generates exports with industrial added value or human capital. It is key to transmit that to the technicians and to those who make the political decisions in the Fund. I did it. I talked to Roberto Cardarelli and everyone.

– What did they answer?

– They were not reluctant to understand that a growth program made the agreement with Argentina more viable than an adjustment program. The Fund itself gives examples of Chile or Brazil when looking at the issue of capital control. The orthodoxy of Federico Sturzenegger or Luis Toto Caputo of this world is more the hangman's noose than a demand of the Fund. We must argue firmly and responsibly.

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