Dissident Peronist deputy Eduardo Amadeo yesterday claimed the credit for turning Tigre Mayor Sergio Massa from a fence-sitter into a clearcut opposition option. Asked by the Herald at yesterday’s Club de la Unión Nacional luncheon if it was the primary result or some other factor which had changed him from a Massa rival to ally, Amadeo said it was Massa who had changed — after making a false start as a “neither Kirchnerite nor anti-Kirchnerite candidate,” Massa converted to his current critical stance after a meeting with Amadeo and former economy minister Roberto Lavagna resulting in the former’s withdrawal and the latter’s endorsement.
Amadeo was highly critical of Kirchnerism for constantly valuing the present over the future and consumption over investment and savings. Despite growth averaging 6.7 percent in the 2003-11 period and the creation of three million jobs, there was zero credit (including no mortgages) both at public and private level with the country living off its Central Bank reserves, levying a crushing tax burden and rifling pension funds at the rate of 50 billion pesos a year. While Argentina exported 67 percent of its maize as grain, this percentage for Brazil was 12 with far more added value.
Luxury cars and foreign travel subsidized to the tune of 30 billion dollars a year; free trains but no trains for farm freight, making it disastrously expensive — these were some of the absurdities he traced. There was much heavier educational spending but no reform and falling standards, including at the top end — more engineers were being trained but with no genuine reindustrialization there were no jobs for them with 80 percent being employed in the public sector.
On the bright side, he saw commodity price trends as strong enough to make all debt and fiscal problems controllable with high domestic demand and a solid regional market.
In the question session, he spoke of two Argentinas with 25 percent trapped in structural poverty and criticized the opposition majority after the 2009 Congress with the left and even Radicals voting for YPF nationalization, for example.
buenosairesherald.com