Guzmán’s resignation and the kilometers left undone

He arrived in Argentina with the best academic parchments and with the blessing of none other than Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. But the management of Martín Guzmán will be remembered as that of the minister who deactivated the bomb of the eternal debt inherited from Mauricio Macri. Not much more.

In the midst of the tangled internal government that only aggravated the challenges imposed by the pandemic, it did not know how or could not resolve the other pressing problems in Argentina. He lacked fine tuning to attack inflation head-on, the main problem for millions of Argentines who do not have time to wait for “normality”, a desired destination, but insufficient as an objective. Parsimony is a quality that can only be praised to those who have dinner assured.

Guzmán also repeated a shortcoming of other predecessors: he locked himself in his office in the Federal Capital and went out little and nothing to see Argentina. A handful of meetings with the governors and little else. The occasional visit to Córdoba or Santa Fe. Not much else. He was only once in Misiones. He got off at the Posadas airport, especially asked not to have contact with journalists. He toured a bit of the capital hand in hand with Governor Oscar Herrera Ahuad, signed a couple of agreements and quickly left. He stopped paying the businessmen grouped in the Economic Confederation of Missions. He did not know the reality of yerba mate, tobacco or the forestry sector, on which, however, as minister, he makes decisions. He did not step on the red earth. Daniel Scioli did more for Missions in a couple of twitters.

It is not an evil that can be blamed only on Guzmán. Nicolás Dujovne was also in Posadas for a little while. He ignored the asymmetries with Paraguay and assured that in order to combat them, taxes had to be lowered and “improved controls” on the border. The Posadas Chamber of Commerce sang for the rudeness. The others from the Cambiemos alliance never came.

Axel Kicillof enjoyed the warmth of the missionary masses, but as a former minister, when he came to campaign in 2018. As a minister, he had had visits counted by the minute. Amado Boudou also came to a couple of events and nothing more. Roberto Lavagna also spent more time in campaign Posadas than as a minister. And so backwards.

The Ministers of Economy define the reality of the country without leaving Buenos Aires. endemic evil. Of Economy and of the cabinets conformed in their majority by officials of the center of the country. It is no coincidence that the governors, now gathered in a League, notice that the President does not listen to the leaders to make transcendental decisions. More federalism, they demand.

Herrera Ahuad marked the premises that Guzmán’s successor should have. “We missionaries have the healthy expectation of being heard to make the Free Zone a reality, that the energy works postponed by the Yacyretá Binational Entity be carried out, that the Federal Co-participation index be updated with the results of the new census, where Misiones is the great emerging province of Argentina. Electricity, gas and fuels with affordable prices to increase the production demanded by our industry and our producers and regulation of Art. 10 of the SMEs Law”, he requested.

Looks a lot like. They have been the topics on the Missions agenda for more than ten years. No minister resolved it.