With only three days to go before the votes are cast that will decide who will become a key representative in the government of Buenos Aires, scraps are ensuing in the political playground. Francisco de Narváez of the opposition party Unión-PRO gave president Cristina Kirchner the perfect opportunity to stick the knife in during a recent interview. Mr De Naráez, who only days before had berated the government’s plans to nationalise private companies stated that YPF, Edenor, Edesur and Metrogas should be back in the hands of the state.
According to former president Néstor Kirchner, Mr De Narváez changed his tune on nationalisation because “he is deperate and he knows he is going to lose” on Sunday in the elections. Mr Kirchner made the most of the opportunity to remind everyone that Mr De Nárvaez was the first to support Mauricio Macri, the mayor of Buenos Aires in respect to reprivatising Aerolíneas Argentinas, the largest domestic and international airline in Argentina. The airline was only renationalised on 3rd September 2008.
MP Daniel Scioli, supporter of the Kirchner government held only disdain for Mr De Narváez: “When he realised that privatisation plans were being rubuked, he quickly changed to being in favour of nationalisation: he only says what the public want to hear.” But Mr Scioli said that he trusted the intelligence of the public and “they would see things as they really are.”
Another candidate in the elections, Ricardo Alfonsín, son of the deceased former president Raúl Alfonsín, accused Mr De Narváez of having a warped sense of reality and a hidden agenda: “Since the majority of society have negative feelings toward what happened in the ’90s, [Unión-PRO] tries to hide the real way in which they wish to govern society.” During this decade president Carlos Saúl Menem opened up the economy and privatised lots of state owned companies, including Aerolíneas Argentinas. This served to delegate power to foreigners and rendered state control impotent.
With unclear political agendas aplenty, it seems that the public will have to work hard on Sunday to choose the candidate that sincerely upholds their values.